102 Quotes by Mike Leigh

He's [Constable] a great painter as far as it goes, but I don't think he's remotely interesting. Not really. It's very pretty and it's very thorough, but it's not evocative, it's not dramatic, it doesn't do what Beethoven does - it doesn't shake you down to the roots of your soul, which Turner does. Constable is just very nice, basically. And moving on to personality, Constable was a very dull character.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.

You can't make a movie about the artist without shooting outdoors.

I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.

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.

I am very happy to be part of European and world cinema as a British filmmaker.