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There's a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one's awareness really and consciousness of things.
Mike Leigh -
The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh -
I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.
Mike Leigh -
Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.
Mike Leigh -
The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.
Mike Leigh -
I think Michael Caine is a perfectly good actor but it's obvious he's not going to be in one of my films.
Mike Leigh -
If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.
Mike Leigh
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I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.
Mike Leigh -
Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.
Mike Leigh -
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.
Mike Leigh -
I discover what my film is by embarking on the journey of making it.
Mike Leigh -
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.
Mike Leigh -
When it comes to thinking about how a character talks, there are literary and language considerations. For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit.
Mike Leigh
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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.
Mike Leigh -
The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.
Mike Leigh -
I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 500 plays.
Mike Leigh -
Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.
Mike Leigh -
I think the camera has got to be motivated. You can't have things arrived at gratuitously. Everything has to have an organic function, but the more comfortable I've become and the more imaginative and sophisticated and the more exploratory I've become at the medium, the more I've subtly deviated away from that in various ways.
Mike Leigh -
It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.
Mike Leigh
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I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience. When you're meeting somebody for the first time, all you have to go on are your preconceptions and your stereotypes and whatever else, but gradually as you get to know them, they change. They become more three-dimensional, and you start to see them in layers.
Mike Leigh