Top Mike Leigh Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Mike Leigh Biography

Mike Leigh OBE (born 20 February 1943) is an English writer and director of film and theatre. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) before honing his directing skills at East 15 Acting School and further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s.

Read about Mike Leigh in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Mike Leigh Quotes

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

Artist, Discovery, Film, Journey, Material, Mean

The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.

Camera, Cameras, Character, Running, Runs

I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.

Play, Film, Films, Plays, Walked, 500

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

Character, Cinema, Like, Real, Sit, Thinking

What I do is to collaborate with each actor and work one-on-one to create a character. And that is a matter of huge complexity and is a combination of a great deal of discussion and a lot of practical work. It involves a lot of consideration for the real people out there, and all kinds of sources of real people. The result is the character. But I'm not supposed to talk about what it is we do, because it's nobody's business.

Real, Character, People, Sources, Collaborate

There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will always be bad and there are good actors who you cry for because they're being badly directed or the material isn't good enough.

Directors, Actors, Cry, Badly, Bad

I think it's important that nobody forgets that although Hollywood commercially dominates the world cinema, in fact what comes out of the filmmaking here is only a tiny slice out of the massive amount of operation that goes on around the world.

Although, Filmmaking, Hollywood, Important, Thinking, World

I'm old enough to have friends and contemporaries who have long since retired, and that's their prerogative - enough is enough; it doesn't mean a thing to me. But I haven't got any money, so, you know, I just keep on working.

Mean, Long, Enough, Retired, Money

He's [Constable] a great painter as far as it goes, but I don't think he's remotely interesting. Not really. It's very pretty and it's very thorough, but it's not evocative, it's not dramatic, it doesn't do what Beethoven does - it doesn't shake you down to the roots of your soul, which Turner does. Constable is just very nice, basically. And moving on to personality, Constable was a very dull character.

Character, Down, Interesting, Moving, Nice, Pretty

I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions. . . . Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

Away, Cutting, Feelings, Final, Guy, Hollywood

My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film.

Actors, Apart, Ensemble, Job, Jobs, Working Together

The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.

Character, Location, Spirit, Themes, Thing, Whole

The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

Acting, Actors, Ask, Farther, Notion, Way

I have to get out of bed every day to make something happen.

Bed, Happen, Happens, Make, Things Happen

I know, that trends and all of those things and formulae that calculate what audiences want to see and what audiences don't want to see and various other demographic demarcations are the eccentric and ludicrous prerogative of Hollywood studios. But out there in the real world - by which I mean the rest of the world where we make truthful organic films, independent films unimpeded by interference - it's not about all those sort of calculating what is commercial. It's about wanting to say things and saying them in a way that will get through to people.

Eccentric, Independent, Mean, Real, Studios, Trends

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

Cinema, Emotionally, Feels, Ideologically, Ifs, Part

If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.

Action, Film, Imaginative, Say, School, Set

One of the reasons the whole Hollywood way of making films wouldn't work for me is because the way I operate would be anathema to anyone who wants to hold a job down in Beverly Hills.

Jobs, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Anathema, Making, Job

I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.

British, Cinema, Filmmaker, Happy, Part, World

There have always been and there always will be the peripheral sideline activities which are a form of entertainment, which is to say you pay a couple of cents and you see something freakish. That is what reality TV is.

Cents, Couple, Pay, Reality, Say, Sideline

1