It's an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That's just rubbish, basically.

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• Mike Leigh:

  Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it

• Mike Leigh:

  I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

• Mike Leigh:

  But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

• Mike Leigh:

  My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either y

• Mike Leigh:

  There are plenty of bad actors and there are plenty of bad directors. There are actors who will alw

• Mike Leigh:

  I've walked out of films. But for every film I've ever walked out of, I've probably walked out of 5

• Mike Leigh:

  My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also

• Mike Leigh:

  But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you're not snooping into somebody else's li

• Mike Leigh:

  I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinem

• Mike Leigh:

  I think it's important that nobody forgets that although Hollywood commercially dominates the world