Mike Leigh

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.

Known For: Directing

Born: Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK, 1943-02-20

Died: null

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1963	Two Left Feet	Jim	50
2	1982	Mike Leigh: Making Plays	Self	80
3	1998	Inside the Golden Statue	Self	63
4	1998	Welcome to Hollywood	Mike Leigh	36
5	2000	Mike Leigh: The Conversation	Self - Interviewee	0
6	2003	Cinema16: British Short Films	Self - Commentary, The Short & Curlies (voice)	46
7	2007	All About 'Abigail's Party'	Self	63
8	2009	Looking for Truffaut	Self	70
9	2009	Vittorio D.	Self	63
10	2013	What Is Cinema?	Self	64
11	2014	The One and Only Mike Leigh	Self	90
12	2016	Alan Clarke: Out of His Own Light	Self	0
13	2021	Why Are We (Not) Creative?	Self	60
14	2025	Humphrey Jennings: The Man Who Listened to Britain	Self	0
15		Untitled 13		0
16	2018	Scenes from A Separation	Self	5
17	2020	Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today	Self	0
18	2023	Cannes Uncut	Self	58
19	2024	Her Name Was Moviola	Self	0
20	2025	Citizen B	Self	0

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1953	The Oscars	Self	71
2	1960	Maigret		69
3	1967	Omnibus	Self	72
4	2004	The Culture Show	Self	62
5	2005	Le Cercle		0
6	2006	The One Show	Self - Guest	45
7	2006	The One Show	Self	45
8	2007	The Alan Titchmarsh Show	Self	37
9	2012	Square	Self	0
10	2022	Reel Britannia	Self	85

Mike Leigh

Film

Television