Mike Leigh

Overview

Known for
Acting
Gender
Male
Birthday
Feb 20, 1943 (82 years old)

Mike Leigh

Known For

Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain
0h 50m
Movie 2025

Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain

Documentary about Humphrey Jennings, an English documentary filmmaker from the 1930s to 1950.

Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain
0h 50m
Movie 2025

Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain

Documentary about Humphrey Jennings, an English documentary filmmaker from the 1930s to 1950.

Citizen B
0h 59m
Movie 2025

Citizen B

Documentary on Ciby 2000, the French film production company founded by Francis Bouygues in 1990.

Cannes Uncut
1h 25m
Movie 2023

Cannes Uncut

Looks at the glamour, red carpets, movies, craziness, stunts, deals, parties and personalities that have been part of the Cannes Film Festival over eight decades, as well as looking to the future.

Reel Britannia
TV Show 2022

Reel Britannia

Comedian Nick Helm narrates this bold new documentary series exploring the dramatic history of British cinema. Discover how cinema held a mirror up to society from 1960 through to the 00s.

Why Are We (Not) Creative?
1h 29m
Movie 2021

Why Are We (Not) Creative?

In this second installment of his exploration of creativity, Hermann Vaske looks for factors that inhibit it. He asks artists, activists, and thinkers about things that kill their creativity.

Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today
1h 29m
Movie 2020

Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today

Marking Play for Today’s 50th anniversary, Drama Out of a Crisis is a compelling exploration of the series, its origins, achievements, controversies and legacies. Featuring a rich and surprising range of archive extracts and original interviews with many who created the series, including producers Kenith Trodd, Margaret Matheson and Richard Eyre, and directors Mike Leigh, David Hare and Ken Loach.

Biography

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.