Mike Leigh Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  People, Giving, Film

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Nice, Moving, Character

  "Mike Leigh, Unscripted". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 21, 2014.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Real, Character, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I hate period films - and there are plenty of them - where they say, "Let's not do contemporary language because the audience won't understand it;" "let's not make the girls wear corsets, because it's not sexy" and all that sort of thing. Gradually it disintegrates into a no man's land: you don't really believe it's a period scene and it doesn't feel like it's now because it's not now. You don't feel it's quite real and you don't believe in it.

  Mike Leigh

  Girl, Sexy, Hate

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Hollywood, Film, Reason

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Cinema, World, British

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Jobs, Trends, Want

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Hollywood, London, Saws

  "Big Think Interview With Mike Leigh". Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Optimistic, Destroying, Planets

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Bed, Happens, Things Happen

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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• Very occasionally I hire an actor and get it wrong. The actor just doesn't trust the process or me as fully as I thought they would. In this case, you can be quite sure that if an actor is untrusting, it's got nothing to do with me or the process.

  Mike Leigh

  Actors, Process, Cases

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Acting, Actors, Way

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Hollywood, World, Film

  "Big Think Interview With Mike Leigh". Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 7, 2010.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Hate, Healthy, Hollywood

  Interview with Chloe Veltman, www.believermag.com. March/April 2009.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Stuff, Film, Developing

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Thinking, Important, Hollywood

  "The Auteur, The Voyeur: Mike Leigh Talks". Interview with Durga Chew-Bose, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 8, 2010.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Long, Cameras, Film

  "Lynne: People quote your films at parties. Mike: Those are lousy parties". Interview with Lynne Ramsay, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2005.

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• 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

  Play, Film

  "Mike Leigh: 'Creativity is a life-blood for people'". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. April 09, 2011.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Mean, Long, Enough

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

  Mike Leigh

  Obsession, Creeps, Millions

  Interview with Derek Malcolm, www.theguardian.com. October 7, 2002.

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• 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.

  Mike Leigh

  Integrity, Real, Principles

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

  Mike Leigh

  Thinking, Film, Sophisticated

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 23, 2008.

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

  Mike Leigh

  Funny, Morning, Night

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• 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

  Selfish, Resilience, Acting

  "Mike Leigh: 'Creativity is a life-blood for people'". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. April 9, 2011.

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