Mike Leigh

Birthday: 1943-02-20
Birthplace: Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK
Gender: Male

Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE (born 20 February 1943) is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between work for the theatre and making films for BBC Television, many of which were characterized by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. His well-known films include Life is Sweet (1990), the comedy-drama Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic Topsy Turvy (1999), and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). His most notable works are arguably Naked (1993) for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the BAFTA-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Palme d'Or winner Secrets & Lies (1996) and Golden Lion winner Vera Drake (2004).

His films and stage plays, according to the 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."  Coveney further noted Leigh's role in helping 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 Sheila Kelley, Paul Jesson, Phil Daniels, Lindsay Duncan, Lesley Sharp, Kathy Burke, Stephen Rea, Eric Richard, Julie Walters – "comprises an impressive, almost representative, nucleus of outstanding British acting talent."  Ian Buruma, writing in the New York Review of Books in January 1994, noted: "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."

Description above from the Wikipedia article Mike Leigh, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Credits

Year Title
Untitled Mike Leigh Film
2024-12-06 Hard Truths
2018-11-01 Peterloo
2014-10-31 Mr. Turner
2012-06-24 A Running Jump
2010-11-05 Another Year
2008-04-18 Happy-Go-Lucky
2004-10-22 Vera Drake
2003-05-05 Cinema16: British Short Films
2002-05-17 All or Nothing
1999-12-15 Topsy-Turvy
1997-06-01 Career Girls
1996-05-24 Secrets & Lies
1993-09-14 Naked
1993-04-05 Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright
1992-09-12 A Sense of History
1990-11-15 Life Is Sweet
1989-01-13 High Hopes
1987-12-01 The Short & Curlies
1984-11-29 Four Days in July
1983-10-16 Meantime
1982-09-09 Afternoon
1982-09-08 A Light Snack
1982-09-07 Probation
1982-09-06 Old Chums
1982-09-05 The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final
1982-03-16 Home Sweet Home
1980-11-27 Grown-Ups
1979-02-05 Who's Who
1977-11-01 Abigail's Party
1977-01-10 The Kiss of Death
1976-01-13 Nuts in May
1975-04-09 The Permissive Society
1973-03-12 Hard Labour
1973-03-08 A Mug's Game?
1971-11-30 Bleak Moments