Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh was born on February 20, 1943 in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. He is a director and writer, known for
High Hopes (1988), Life Is Sweet (1980), Secret and Lies (1996), Career Girls (1997), Happy Go Lucky (2008), and Another Year (2010)
Mike Leigh on Albert Finney: had he not backed me, my career might never have happened
The award-winning director remembers Finney’s unique bonhomie, from his shining legacy at Salford grammar school to his support of Leigh’s film debut Bleak Moments
By Mike Leigh | THE GUARDIAN February 15,2019
When I arrived at Salford grammar school in 1954, Albert Finney had just left for Rada, the glittering star of the school’s dramatic society. My school friend and future colleague Les Blair, a year my senior, witnessed his legendary performance as Sweeney Todd. Albert’s legacy shone its light on all of our productions and we tracked his meteoric progress in awe. My final-year production of a very forgettable play won the brand new Albert Finney cup, donated by his parents.
By the time I followed him to Rada in 1960, Albert had become an RSC star, understudying and going on for Laurence Olivier as Coriolanus; he had toured with Charles Laughton, had just completed Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and was appearing in the West End as Billy Liar. There, my Rada classmate and fellow Mancunian Ian McShane and I sheepishly visited him in his dressing room after a performance, to be greeted by his characteristically convivial generosity.
‘Silly question!’ Mike Leigh interviewed by readers and famous fans
The acclaimed director answers a wide range of your questions about creative freedom, James Bond, and everything Rada didn’t teach him
Courtesy of THE GUARDIAN
Mike Leigh sits before me, in his Soho office, a man without regrets – certainly with regard to his work, but probably in most aspects of his life, one suspects. If this doesn’t make him unique in the film industry, then he’s certainly in a tiny minority. The 75-year-old British director has made 20-odd films – from his TV work in the 1970s up to his latest release, Peterloo, perhaps his most ambitious and certainly his most expensive project yet – and he has never once had his arm twisted to compromise on his creative vision. He chooses the subject, handpicks the actors and the version we see on the screen is exactly the one that Leigh intended.
“I’m open to people who are happy for me to do what I do,” he explains. “I’m not open to anybody who tries to tell me what to do. I have on many occasions walked away from a project where there’s been even the suggestion that, ‘Well, we’ll back the film so long as there’s an American star in it.’ Walk away.”
Really, he’d walk away? “Of course,” Leigh replies, clearly considering the question either idiotic or mad. “And I have done on a number of occasions. It’s like a novelist being told what the novel should have in it. Or a painter being told, ‘It must include a lighthouse.’ And that’s the polite version.”
So Leigh is no people-pleaser, and yet, of course, at the same time he has become one of our best loved film-makers. He was raised in Salford and when he started making plays, and then films, he always imagined he would focus on contemporary issues. A particular inspiration was Jack Clayton’s 1959 film Room at the Top, a story of love and class set in a Yorkshire mill town, which came out when Leigh was 16 [ . . . ]
Read full story at: ‘Silly question!’ Mike Leigh interviewed by our readers and famous fans
Mike Leigh’s historic drama Peterloo to premiere in the same place the 1819 massacre took place
Maxine Peake, the star of Mike Leigh’s new historical drama Peterloo, addressed a Manchester crowd gathered to pay tribute to the film’s bloody political battle.
Peake, 44, made an impassioned speech to crowds gathered to commemorate the massacre which occurred on the same date and in the same place, 199 years ago.The English actress, who stars as Nellie in the film, called the massacre ‘an outrage of which humanity recoils with horror and which is a foul stain upon our national character [ . . . ]
