Quotes by Mike Leigh

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.

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

I've derived a lot of pleasure and education from the theatre. It's great when audiences really enjoy it. It's part of my life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky either your relationship works or it doesn't.