Mike Leigh Quotes

There is a popular misconception that film-makers have to look to Hollywood to be commercially successful but this is how we have been conditioned.

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.

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

The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it`s not all about characters, relationships and themes, it`s also about place and the poetry of place. It`s about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.

The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it`s going to be. The backers accept that they don`t know what they are going to get.

There`s a constant drip and trickle of life that goes into one`s awareness really and consciousness of things.

I am not concerned with making esoteric, obscure kinds of films. These are films that can share and talk to anybody about real things.