Mike Leigh Quotes

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.

I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.

I can't really see how anybody could be particularly optimistic about the future in general because we are destroying the planet.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you're not snooping into somebody else's lives?

Resolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker

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.

I really think people are greatly stimulated and enriched by experiencing in film just as we can from novels and other art, experiencing things that resonate with what our lives are about. I think people really want to know ... want to share, want to have the stimulus to think and care about the way they live their lives, the way they relate to other people, their aspirations, their hopes, et cetera.

The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.

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.

Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.

one day you'll realize that you've had not
just one or two past or future existences... but that you were, and are, everybody and everything that has ever been... or will ever be.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

I grew up looking at ... going to the movies a lot, as much as they'd let you. I grew up in Manchester in the north of England in the '40s and '50s. I saw a lot of movies. They were all Hollywood and British movies. I didn't see a film that wasn't in English until I was 17 when I went to London to be a student.

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

Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

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.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

Some of my favorite movies are Hollywood movies. Hollywood is part of the cinematic spectrum. I nurture a healthy love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

There is a great tradition of independent filmmaking in the U.S. that I absolutely respect. There's some wonderful stuff that comes out in this country against all the odds.

Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody – you're all so bored. You've 'ad nature explained to you, and you're bored with it. You've 'ad the living body explained to you, and you're bored with it. You've 'ad the universe explained to you, and you're bored with it. So now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of 'em, and it dun matter 'ow tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fucking bleeps in forty different colours.

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.

You can't make a movie about the artist without shooting outdoors.

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.

Louise: "How did you get here?"
Johnny: "Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.

In the first place, I'm pretty thorough about whom I choose. I instinctively look for the kind of actor who is going to be trusting. There are all kinds of insecure people out there called actors.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.

I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

A lot of the reasons that I'm resistant to making films in the U.S. have nothing to do with not doing a film in Hollywood, but rather to do with what I'm committed to working on in the U.K. I feel very committed to the British film industry and infrastructure.

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.

The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.

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

It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.