Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh OBE FRSL (born 20 February 1943) is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), East 15 Acting School and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique.[5] He began his career as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s, before transitioning to making televised plays and films for BBC Television in the 1970s and '80s. Leigh is known for his lengthy rehearsal and improvisation techniques with actors to build characters and narrative for his films. His purpose is to capture reality and present "emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films."[6] His films and stage plays, according to critic Michael Coveney, "comprise a distinctive, homogenous body of work which stands comparison with anyone's in the British theatre and cinema over the same period."[7]

Mike Leigh OBE, FRSL
Leigh at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival
Born	Mike Leigh[1][2] 20 February 1943 Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England[3]
Alma mater	Royal Academy of Dramatic Art East 15 Acting School Camberwell School of Art and Design Central School of Art and Design London School of Film Technique
Occupation	Director, screenwriter, producer, actor
Years active	1963–present
Notable work	Life Is Sweet (1990) Naked (1993) Secrets & Lies (1996) Topsy-Turvy (1999) Vera Drake (2004) Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) Another Year (2010) Mr. Turner (2014)
Spouse(s)	Alison Steadman ​ ​ (m. 1973; div. 2001)​
Partner(s)	Marion Bailey
Children	2

Leigh's most notable works are the black comedy-drama Naked (1993), for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes,[8] the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA- and Palme d'Or-winning drama Secrets & Lies (1996), the Golden Lion-winning working-class drama Vera Drake (2004), and the Palme d'Or-nominated biopic Mr. Turner (2014). Other well-known films include the comedy-dramas Life Is Sweet (1990) and Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biographical film Topsy-Turvy (1999) and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). He won great success with American audiences with the female led films, Vera Drake (2004) starring Imelda Staunton, Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) with Sally Hawkins, the family drama Another Year (2010), the portrait of an artist Mr. Turner (2014), and the historical drama Peterloo (2018).[9][10][11][12] His stage plays include Smelling A Rat, It's A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Goose-Pimples, Ecstasy and Abigail's Party.[13]

Leigh has helped to create stars – Liz Smith in Hard Labour, Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party, Brenda Blethyn in Grown-Ups, Antony Sher in Goose-Pimples, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Meantime, Jane Horrocks in Life is Sweet, David Thewlis in Naked—and remarked that the list of actors who have worked with him over the years—including Paul Jesson, Phil Daniels, Lindsay Duncan, Lesley Sharp, Kathy Burke, Stephen Rea, Julie Walters – "comprises an impressive, almost representative, nucleus of outstanding British acting talent."[14] His aesthetic has been compared to the sensibility of the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu and the Italian Federico Fellini. Ian Buruma, writing in The New York Review of Books in January 1994, commented: "It is hard to get on a London bus or listen to the people at the next table in a cafeteria without thinking of Mike Leigh. Like other wholly original artists, he has staked out his own territory. Leigh's London is as distinctive as Fellini's Rome or Ozu's Tokyo."[15][16]

Early life

Leigh was born to Phyllis Pauline (née Cousin) and Alfred Abraham Leigh, a doctor.[17] Leigh was born at Brocket Hall in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire,[18] which was at that time a maternity home. His mother, in her confinement, went to stay with her parents in Hertfordshire for comfort and support while her husband was serving as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Leigh was brought up in the Broughton area of Salford, Lancashire. He is from a Jewish family; his paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled in Manchester. The family name, originally Lieberman, had been anglicised in 1939 "for obvious reasons".[19][20][21][22] When the war ended, Leigh's father began his career as a general practitioner in Higher Broughton, "the epicentre of Leigh's youngest years and the area memorialised in Hard Labour."[23] Leigh went to Salford Grammar School, as did the director Les Blair, his friend, who produced Leigh's first feature film Bleak Moments (1971). There was a strong tradition of drama in the all-boys school, and an English master, Mr Nutter, supplied the library with newly published plays.[24]

Outside school Leigh thrived in the Manchester branch of Labour Zionist youth movement Habonim. In the late 1950s he attended summer camps and winter activities over the Christmas break all round the country. Throughout this time the most important part of his artistic consumption was cinema, although this was supplemented by his discovery of Picasso, Surrealism, The Goon Show, and even family visits to the Hallé Orchestra and the D'Oyly Carte). His father, however, was deeply opposed to the idea that Leigh might become an artist or an actor. He forbade him his frequent habit of sketching visitors who came to the house and regarded him as a problem child because of his creative interests.[25] In 1960, "to his utter astonishment", he won a scholarship to RADA. Initially trained as an actor at RADA, Leigh started to hone his directing skills at East 15 Acting School where he met the actress Alison Steadman.[26]

Leigh responded negatively to RADA's agenda, found himself being taught how to "laugh, cry and snog" for weekly rep purposes and so became a sullen student. He later attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (in 1963), the Central School of Art and Design and the London School of Film Technique on Charlotte Street. When he had arrived in London, one of the first films he had seen was Shadows (1959), an improvised film by John Cassavetes, in which a cast of unknowns was observed 'living, loving and bickering' on the streets of New York and Leigh had "felt it might be possible to create complete plays from scratch with a group of actors."[27] Other influences from this time included Harold Pinter's The Caretaker—"Leigh was mesmerised by the play and the (Arts Theatre) production"— Samuel Beckett, whose novels he read avidly, and the writing of Flann O'Brien, whose "tragi-comedy" Leigh found particularly appealing. Influential and important productions he saw in this period included Beckett's Endgame, Peter Brook's King Lear and in 1965 Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, a production developed through improvisations, the actors having based their characterisations on people they had visited in a mental hospital. The visual worlds of Ronald Searle,[28] George Grosz, Picasso, and William Hogarth exerted another kind of influence. He played small roles in several British films in the early 1960s, (West 11,Two Left Feet) and played a young deaf-mute, interrogated by Rupert Davies, in the BBC Television series Maigret. In 1964–65, he collaborated with David Halliwell, and designed and directed the first production of Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs at the Unity Theatre.[29]

Leigh has been described as "a gifted cartoonist ... a northerner who came south, slightly chippy, fiercely proud (and critical) of his roots and Jewish background; and he is a child of the 1960s and of the explosion of interest in the European cinema and the possibilities of television."[30][31]

Career

1960s

In 1965, he went to work at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham as a resident assistant director and had the opportunity to start experimenting with the idea that writing and rehearsing could potentially be part of the same process. The Box Play, a family scenario staged in a cage-like box, "absorbed all sorts of contemporary ideas in art such as the space frames of Roland Pichet..it was visually very exciting," and two more 'improvised' pieces followed.[32]

After the Birmingham interlude he found a flat in Euston, where he lived for the next ten years. In 1966–67, he worked as an assistant director with the Royal Shakespeare Company on productions of Macbeth, Coriolanus, and The Taming of the Shrew. He worked on an improvised play of his own with some professional actors called NENAA, (an acronym for the North East New Arts Association), which explored the fantasies of a Tynesider working in a café, with ideas of founding an arts association in the northeast.[33]

1970s

Leigh wrote, in 1970, "I saw that we must start off with a collection of totally unrelated characters (each one the specific creation of its actor) and then go through a process in which I must cause them to meet each other, and build a network of real relationships; the play would be drawn from the results." After Stratford-upon-Avon, Leigh directed a couple of London drama school productions that included Thomas Dekker's The Honest Whore at E15 Acting School in Loughton – where he met Alison Steadman for the first time. In 1968, wanting to return to Manchester, he sub-let his London flat and moved to Levenshulme. Taking up a part-time lectureship in a Catholic women teachers training college, Sedgley Park, he ran a drama course and devised and directed Epilogue, focusing on a priest with doubts, and for the Manchester Youth Theatre he devised and directed two big-cast projects, Big Basil and Glum Victoria and the Lad with Specs.[33]

As the decade came to a close, Leigh knew he wanted to make films, and that "The manner of working was at last fixed. There would be discussions and rehearsals. Plays or films would develop organically with actors fully liberated into the creative process. After an exploratory improvisation period, Leigh would write a structure, indicating the order in which scenes happened, usually with a single bare sentence: Johnny and Sophie meet; Betty does Joy's hair; [etc.]. And it was rehearsed and rehearsed until it achieved the required quality of 'finish'."[34]

In the 1970s, Leigh made nine television plays. Earlier plays such as Nuts in May and Abigail's Party tended more towards bleakly yet humorously satirising middle-class manners and attitudes. His plays are generally more caustic, stridently trying to show the banality of society.[33] Goose-Pimples and Abigail's Party both focus on the vulgar middle class in a convivial party setting that spirals out of control. The television version of Abigail's Party was made at some speed, Steadman was pregnant at the time, and Leigh's objections to flaws in the production, particularly the lighting, led to his preference for theatrical films.[33]

1980s

There was something of a hiatus in Leigh's career following the death of his father at the end of February 1985. Leigh was in Australia at the time – having agreed to attend a screenwriters conference in Melbourne at the start of 1985, he had then accepted an invitation to teach at the Australian Film School in Sydney – and he then 'buried his solitude and sense of loss in a busy round of people, publicity and talks.' He gradually extended 'the long journey home' and went on to visit Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, China. He said later, " The whole thing was an amazing, unforgettable period in my life. But it was all to do with personal feelings, my father, where to go next, and my desire to make a feature film. I felt I was at the end of one stage of my career and at the start of another."[33]

His 1986 project codenamed 'Rhubarb', for which he had gathered actors in Blackburn, including Jane Horrocks, Julie Walters and David Thewlis, was cancelled after seven weeks rehearsals and Leigh returned home. "The nature of what I do is totally creative, and you have to get in there and stick with it. The tension between the bourgeois suburban and the anarchist bohemian that is in my work is obviously in my life, too...I started to pull myself together. I didn't work, I simply stayed at home and looked after the boys." In 1987 Channel 4 put up some money for a short film and, with Portman Productions, agreed to co-produce Leigh's first feature film since Bleak Moments.[35]

In 1988, Mike Leigh and producer Simon Channing Williams founded Thin Man Films, a film production company based in London, to produce Mike Leigh's films.[36] They chose the company name because both founders were the opposite of it. Later in 1988, he made High Hopes, about a disjointed working-class family whose members live in a run-down flat and a council house. Leigh's subsequent films such as Naked and Vera Drake are somewhat starker, more brutal, and concentrate more on the working-class. His stage plays include Smelling A Rat, It's A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Goose-Pimples, Ecstasy, and Abigail's Party.[37]

1990s

Throughout the 1990s, Leigh enjoyed his share of critical successes including such films as the comedy Life is Sweet (1990) starring Alison Steadman, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Claire Skinner, and Jane Horrocks. The film was his third feature film which follows a working-class North London family over a few weeks one summer. Film critic Philip French in The Observer defending the criticisms against Leigh's as patronizing by comparing the film of that of Noël Coward/David Lean by writing, "Several panning shots across suburban back gardens, is patronizing. Coward and Lean pat their characters on the back...Leigh shakes them, hugs them, sometimes despairs over them, but never thinks that they are other than versions of ourselves."[38] The film was nominated by the Independent Spirit Awards for Best International Film.

Leigh's fourth feature film was the black comedy Naked (1993) starring David Thewlis as a deranged intellectual and conspiracy theorist. The film premiered at the 46th Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or and received wins for Best Director for Leigh and Best Actor for Thewlis. Derek Malcolm of The Guardian noted that the film "is certainly Leigh's most striking piece of cinema to date" and that "it tries to articulate what is wrong with the society that Mrs Thatcher claims does not exist."[39]

In 1996, Leigh directed his fifth feature film the drama Secrets & Lies (1996). The film's ensemble featured a cast of Leigh regular's including Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. The film premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival where it received the Palme d'Or and the Best Actress award for Blethyn. The film was both a financial and critical success. Influential film critic Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times gave Secrets & Lies four out of four stars. He wrote that "moment after moment, scene after scene, Secrets & Lies unfolds with the fascination of eavesdropping". He called the film "a flowering of his technique. It moves us on a human level, it keeps us guessing during scenes as unpredictable as life, and it shows us how ordinary people have a chance of somehow coping with their problems, which are rather ordinary, too."[40] In 2009, he added the film to his "Great Movies" list.[41] The film received five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, and Best Director.

2000s

The anger inherent in Leigh's material, in some ways typical of the Thatcher years, softened after her departure from the political scene. In 2005, Leigh returned to directing for the stage after many years absence with his new play, Two Thousand Years at the Royal National Theatre in London. The play deals with the divisions within a left-wing secular Jewish family when one of the younger members finds religion. It is the first time Leigh has drawn on his Jewish background for inspiration.[33]

In 2002, Leigh became Chairman for his alma mater, London Film School. Leigh remained Chair until March 2018, where he was succeeded by Greg Dyke.

In 2004, he directed ninth directorial feature film, Vera Drake, a British period film about a working class woman (Imelda Staunton), who performs illegal abortions during the 1950s. The film premiered at the 61st Venice International Film Festival to rapturous reviews where it won the Golden Lion for Best Film, and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Staunton. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 92% with the consensus, "with a piercingly powerful performance by Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake brings teeming humanity to the controversial subject of abortion."[42] The film received 11 British Academy Film Award nominations winning 3 awards for Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Costume Design. The film was also nominated for 3 Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.

In 2008, Leigh released his a modern-day comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky starring Sally Hawkins where it debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival where she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. The film was a critical success with many praising Hawkins for her lead performance. She received many Awards including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. That same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008.[43]

2010s

Leigh at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival

In 2010, Leigh released his film, Another Year starring Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, and Lesley Manville. It premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d'Or.[44] The film was shown at the 54th London Film Festival before its general British release date on 5 November 2010.[45] The film was also a success in the United States with film critic Roger Ebert giving the film his highest rating, four out of four stars writing, "Not quite every year brings a new Mike Leigh film, but the years that do are blessed with his sympathy, penetrating observation, and instinct for human comedy...Leigh's “Another Year” is like a long, purifying soak in empathy."[46] At the 83rd Academy Awards, Leigh was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay losing to The King's Speech.[47][48]

In 2012, Leigh was selected to be jury president of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival.[49]

Leigh released his twelfth feature film, the biographical period film Mr. Turner (2014) based on the life and artworks of J. M. W. Turner portrayed by Timothy Spall. The film premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or and won rave reviews, with many critics praising Spall's performance as the talented and tortured artist. Spall received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor Award and the film won the Vulcan Award for its cinematography by Dick Pope. Observer critic Mark Kermode described the film as a "portrait of a man wrestling light with his hands as if it were a physical element: tangible, malleable, corporeal".[50] That year, Leigh joined The Hollywood Reporter for an hourlong roundtable discussion with other directors who had made films that year Richard Linklater (Boyhood), Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher), Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), Angelina Jolie (Unbroken), and Christopher Nolan (Interstellar).[51][52] The film received four Academy Award nominations for its Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, and Costume Design.

In 2015, he accepted an offer from English National Opera to direct the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance (cond: David Parry, design: Alison Chitty, starring: Andrew Shore, Rebecca de Pont Davies and Jonathan Lemalu). The production then toured Europe, visiting Luxembourg (Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg), Caen (Théâtre de Caen) and Saarländisches Staatstheater.

In 2018, Leigh released another historical feature, Peterloo, based on the 1819 Peterloo Massacre.[53] The film was selected to be screened in the main competition section of the 75th Venice International Film Festival. The film was distributed in the UK by Entertainment One and in the US by Amazon Video. The film received mixed reviews with The New York Times called it a "brilliant and demanding film".[54]

2020s

In February 2020, it was reported that he would begin shooting his latest film in the Summer.[55]

Style

Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and storylines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop, but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed. Initial preparation is in private with the director and then the actors are introduced to each other in the order that their characters would have met in their lives. Intimate moments are explored that will not even be referred to in the final film to build insight and understanding of history, character and personal motivation. When an improvisation needs to be stopped, he says to the actors: 'Come out of character,' before they discuss what's happened or what might have happened in a situation.[56]

Leigh begins his projects without a script, but starts from a basic premise that is developed through improvisation by the actors. Leigh initially works one-to-one with each actor, developing a character who is based, in the first place, on someone he or she knows. The critical scenes in the eventual story are performed and recorded in full-costumed, real-time improvisations where the actors encounter for the first time new characters, events or information which may dramatically affect their characters' lives. Final filming is more traditional as definite sense of story, action and dialogue is then in place. The director reminds the cast of material from the improvisations that he hopes to capture on film. "The world of the characters and their relationships is brought into existence by discussion and a great amount of improvisation ... And research into anything and everything that will fill out the authenticity of the character." It is after months of rehearsal, or 'preparing for going out on location to make up a film', that Leigh writes a shooting script, a bare scenario. Then, on location, after further 'real rehearsing', the script is finalized; "I'll set up an improvisation, ... I'll analyse and discuss it, ... we'll do another and I'll ... refine and refine... until the actions and dialogue are totally integrated. Then we shoot it."[57]

In an interview with Laura Miller, "Listening to the World: An Interview With Mike Leigh", published on salon.com, Leigh states, "I make very stylistic films indeed, but style doesn't become a substitute for truth and reality. It's an integral, organic part of the whole thing." Leigh's vision is to depict ordinary life, "real life", unfolding under extenuating circumstances.[58] Speaking of his films, he says, "No, I'm not an intellectual filmmaker. These are emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films. And there's a feeling of despair...I think there's a feeling of chaos and disorder."[6] He makes courageous decisions to document reality. He speaks about the criticism Naked received: "The criticism comes from the kind of quarters where "political correctness" in its worst manifestation is rife. It's this kind of naive notion of how we should be in an unrealistic and altogether unhealthily over-wholesome way."[59]

Leigh's characters often struggle, "to express inexpressible feelings. Words are important, but rarely enough. The art of evasion and failure in communication certainly comes from Pinter, whom Leigh acknowledges as an important influence. He especially admires Pinter's earliest work and directed The Caretaker while still at RADA."[60]

Influences

Leigh has cited Jean Renoir and Satyajit Ray among his favourite film makers. In addition to those two, in an interview recorded at the National Film Theatre at the BFI on 17 March 1991; Leigh also cited Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, Yasujirō Ozu and even Jean-Luc Godard, "...until the late 60s."[61] When pressed for British influences, in that interview, he referred to the Ealing comedies "...despite their unconsciously patronizing way of portraying working class people" and the early 60s British New Wave films. When asked for his favorite comedies, he replied, One, Two, Three, La règle du jeu and "any Keaton".[61] The critic David Thomson has written that, with the camera work in his films characterised by 'a detached, medical watchfulness', Leigh's aesthetic may justly be compared to the sensibility of the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu. Michael Coveney: " The cramped domestic interiors of Ozu find many echoes in Leigh's scenes on stairways and in corridors and on landings, especially in Grown-Ups, Meantime and Naked. And two wonderful little episodes in Ozu's Tokyo Story, in a hairdressing salon and a bar, must have been in Leigh's subconscious memory when he made The Short and Curlies (1987), one of his most devastatingly funny pieces of work and the pub scene in Life is Sweet..."[62]

Personal life

In September 1973, he married actress Alison Steadman; they have two sons: Toby (born February 1978)[63] and Leo (born August 1981). Steadman appeared in seven of his films and several of his plays, including Wholesome Glory and Abigail's Party. They divorced in 2001.[64] The actress Marion Bailey is his current partner.[65]

Political activism

Leigh is an atheist and a Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK.[66] He is also a republican.[67] In 2014, Leigh publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign for UK press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable."[68][69][70]

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Leigh signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him ahead of the 2019 UK general election.[71] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[72][73]

Work

Film

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Distribution
1971	Bleak Moments	Yes	Yes	BBC Films
1988	High Hopes	Yes	Yes	Skouras Pictures
1990	Life Is Sweet	Yes	Yes	Palace Pictures
1993	Naked	Yes	Yes	Fine Line Features
1996	Secrets & Lies	Yes	Yes	October Films
1997	Career Girls	Yes	Yes	Film4 Productions
1999	Topsy-Turvy	Yes	Yes	Pathé Distribution
2002	All or Nothing	Yes	Yes	UGC Films
2004	Vera Drake	Yes	Yes	Fine Line Features
2008	Happy-Go-Lucky	Yes	Yes	Momentum Pictures
2010	Another Year	Yes	Yes	Sony Pictures Classics
2014	Mr. Turner	Yes	Yes
2018	Peterloo	Yes	Yes	Entertainment One/Amazon

Acting Roles

• West Eleven (1963) - Uncredited
• Two Left Feet (1965) - Uncredited

Television Plays

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1973	Hard Labour	Yes	Yes	BBC Play for Today
1975	The Permissive Society	Yes	Yes	BBC Second City Firsts
1976	Nuts in May	Yes	Yes	BBC Play for Today
	Knock for Knock	Yes	Yes	BBC Second City Firsts
1977	Kiss of Death	Yes	Yes	BBC Play for Today
1977	Abigail's Party	Yes	Yes	BBC Play for Today
1979	Who's Who	Yes	Yes
1980	Grown-Ups	Yes	Yes	BBC2 Playhouse
1982	Home Sweet Home	Yes	Yes	BBC Play for Today
1983	Meantime	Yes	Yes	Premiered at London Film Festival Screened on Channel 4
1985	Four Days in July	Yes	Yes	BBC Film

Television Series

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1963	Maigret	No	No	Actor: "Paul" Dir: Series 4, Episode 6: "The Flemish Shop"
1973	Scene	Yes	No	Dir: "A Mug's Game?" (8 March 1973)
1976	Five Minute Films	Yes	Yes	5-part BBC Series of short films: "The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final" "Old Chums" "Probation" "A Light Snack" "Afternoon"
2009	Teatr telewizji	No	Yes	Episode: "Przyjecie" (25 May 2009)

Short films

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1987	The Short and Curlies	Yes	Yes	Screened on Channel 4
1992	A Sense of History	Yes	No	Screened on Channel 4
2012	A Running Jump	Yes	Yes	Released 24 June 2012 (UK)

Theatre

Work as a Playwright

Year	Title	Venue
1965	The Box Play	Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham
1966	My Parents Have Gone to Carlisle
1966	The Last Crusade of Five Little Nuns
1968	Individual Fruit Pies	East–15 Acting School, London
1968	Down Here Up There	Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London
1969	Glum Victoria and the Lad with Specs	Manchester Youth Theatre
1970	Bleak Moments	Open Space Theatre, London
1971	A Rancid Pong	Basement Theatre, London
1973	Dick Whittington and His Cat	Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London
1973	Wholesome Glory
1973	The Jaws of Death	Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
1974	Babies Grow Old	Royal Shakespeare Company
1974	The Silent Majority	Bush Theatre
1977	Abigail's Party	Hampstead Theatre
1979	Too Much of a Good Thing	Radio Play
1979	Ecstasy	Hampstead Theatre, London
1981 1998	Goose-Pimples	Garrick Theatre, London Judith Anderson Theater, Off-Broadway[74]
1988	Smelling a Rat	Hampstead Theatre, London
1989	Greek Tragedy	Belvoir St Theatre, Australia Edinburgh Festival Theatre Royal, Stratford East
1993	It's a Great Big Shame!	Theatre Royal, Stratford East
2005	Two Thousand Years	National Theatre, London
2011	Grief	Cottesloe Theatre, London

Recurring collaborators

Leigh has a number of regular collaborators. The actor he has worked with the most times on film or television is Lesley Manville (8 appearances), followed by Angela Curran, Sam Kelly and Alison Steadman (7 appearances each), Phil Davies, Martin Savage, Ruth Sheen, Timothy Spall and Peter Wight (6 appearances each), and Marion Bailey and Jim Broadbent (5 appearances each).

Nina Gold has notably been responsible for the casting of roles in seven of his films since 1999.

Frequent actor collaborations (3 or more films)
Actor	Bleak Moments (1971)	Hard Labour (1973)	Five Minute Films (1975)	Knock for Knock (1976)	Nuts in May (1976)	Abigail's Party (1977)	Kiss of Death (1977)	Who's Who (1978)	Grown-Ups (1980)	Home Sweet Home (1982)	Meantime (1983)	Four Days in July (1985)	The Short and Curlies (1987)	High Hopes (1988)	Life Is Sweet (1990)	Naked (1993)	Secrets & Lies (1996)	Career Girls (1997)	Topsy-Turvy (1999)	All or Nothing (2002)	Vera Drake (2004)	Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)	Another Year (2010)	A Running Jump (2012)	Mr. Turner (2014)	Peterloo (2018)
Dorothy Atkinson
Michele Austin
Marion Bailey
Linda Beckett
Elizabeth Berrington
Jim Broadbent
Katrin Cartlidge
Heather Craney
Angela Curran
Eileen Davies
Phil Davis
Edna Doré
Karina Fernandez
Sally Hawkins
Sam Kelly
Oliver Maltman
Lesley Manville
Eddie Marsan
Sinead Matthews
Wendy Nottingham
Martin Savage
Ruth Sheen
Liz Smith
Timothy Spall
Alison Steadman
David Thewlis
Sylvestra Le Touzel
Joe Tucker
Theresa Watson
Peter Wight

Accolades and honors

Leigh has been nominated at the Academy Awards seven times: twice each for Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake (Best Original Screenplay and Best Director) and once for Topsy-Turvy, Happy-Go-Lucky, and Another Year (Best Original Screenplay only). Leigh has also won several prizes at major European film festivals. Most notably, he won the Best Director award at Cannes for Naked in 1993 and the Palme d'Or in 1996 for Secrets & Lies. He won the Leone d'Oro for the best film at the International Venice Film Festival in 2004 with Vera Drake.[75]

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1993 Birthday Honours, for services to the film industry.[76]

Year	Award	Category	Title	Result
1996	Academy Award	Best Director	Secrets & Lies	Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
1999			Topsy Turvy	Nominated
2004		Best Director	Vera Drake	Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
2008			Happy-Go-Lucky	Nominated
2010			Another Year	Nominated
1987	British Academy Film Awards	Best Short Film	The Short and Curlies	Nominated
1992			Sense of History	Nominated
1993		Outstanding British Film	Naked	Nominated
1995		Michael Balcon Award		received
1996		Best Film	Secrets & Lies	Nominated
		Outstanding British Film		Won
		Best Direction		Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Won
1999		Outstanding British Film	Topsy-Turvy	Nominated
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
2004		Outstanding British Film	Vera Drake	Nominated
		Best Direction		Won
		Best Original Screenplay		Nominated
2010		Outstanding British Film	Another Year	Nominated
2014		BAFTA Fellowship		received
1993	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or	Naked	Nominated
		Best Director		Won
1996		Palme d'Or	Secrets & Lies	Won
		Prize of the Ecumenical Jury		Won
2002		Palme d'Or	All or Nothing	Nominated
2010			Another Year	Nominated
		Prize of the Ecumenical Jury		Won
2014		Palme d'Or	Mr. Turner	Nominated

See also

• Kitchen sink realism
• Angry young men
• Working class culture

References

1. England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2007
2. England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005
3. Michael Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, p. 36
4. "Mike Leigh". The Film Programme. 30 August 2007. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
5. Coveney, p. 66
6. Gordon, Bette."Mike Leigh", "BOMB Magazine", Winter, 1994. Retrieved 25 July 2011.
7. The world according to Mike Leigh, p. 8, Michael Coveney, Harper Collins 1996
8. "Festival de Cannes: Naked". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 22 August 2009.
9. "There's a smile on my face, for almost the whole human race". Rogerebert.com. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
10. "The Best of Possible Worlds". Film Comment. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
11. "Review: Mike Leigh Turns The Lens On Himself In 'Mr. Turner,' One Of His Finest Films". IndieWire. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
12. "In The Rich But Scattered 'Peterloo,' Mike Leigh Presents Scenes From A Massacre". NPR. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
13. "Acts of Faith". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
14. Coveney, World according to Mike Leigh, p. 9
15. Buruma, quoted in Coveney, the world according to Mike leigh, p. 14
16. bfi.org.uk, Leighs London locations revisited mike leigh london locations
17. "Mike Leigh biography". filmreference.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
18. "Brocket Babies". www.brocketbabies.org.uk.
19. "Movie Reviews, Ratings, and Best New Movies". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
20. "Habonim spirit influences work of director Mike Leigh in 'Happy-Go-Lucky' – Film". Jewish Journal. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
21. "Mike Leigh cancels Israel visit over 'conscience'". thejc.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
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29. Obituary: David Halliwell|Culture|The Guardian
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36. Duedil: Thin Man Films Limited, duedil.com; accessed 23 April 2018.
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38. Coveney, p. 222
39. Malcolm, Derek. "Naked (Review)." The Guardian. 4 November 1993. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
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48. 2011|Oscars.org
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76. "No. 53332". The London Gazette (Supplement). 11 June 1993. p. B12.

Further reading

• Carney, Ray & Quart, Leonard, The Films of Mike Leigh – Embracing the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• Clements, Paul, The Improvised Play (London: Methuen, 1983) ISBN 0-413-50440-9 (pbk.)
• Coveney, Michael, The World According to Mike Leigh (London: HarperCollins, 1996)
• Movshovitz, Howie (ed.) Mike Leigh Interviews (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2000)
• O'Sullivan, Sean, Mike Leigh (Contemporary Film Directors) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011)
• Raphael, Amy (ed.), Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh (London: Faber & Faber, 2008)
• Whitehead, Tony, Mike Leigh (British Film Makers) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)

External links

• Mike Leigh at IMDb
• Mike Leigh at the BFI's Screenonline
• Mike Leigh at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Mike Leigh on Happy-Go-Lucky and on childhood visits at grandparents in Hitchin, ITV Local Anglia interview 2008
• Mike Leigh live on Film Unlimited – The Guardian, 17 March 2000.