Mike Leigh Masterclass

With his latest film, Vera Drake, winning plaudits, Making Movies presents a Masterclass on one of our most distinctive British filmmakers.

WHO IS HE?
Born in 1943 in Salford, Manchester, Mike Leigh is the prolific director of Naked, Secrets And Lies, Topsy Turvy and Vera Drake, the story of a back street abortionist starring Imelda Staunton.

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WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Possibly the sharpest observer of British manners, mores and morals working in cinema today, Leigh's films never feature guns. Instead, he expertly dissects the thousand small deaths inflicted on individuals by British class and society, family pressure and our own human foibles, a talent which has won him a Best Director award at Cannes for Naked, a Palme D'Or and Oscar nomination for Secrets And Lies and now the Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Film Festival for Vera Drake. Leigh's early work, such as Bleak Moments (1971), about a girl who looks after a mentally handicapped sister who finds it difficult to meet people, and Meantime (1984), starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, about a pair of nihilistically bored young men, do not play to audience expectations, yet they reveal him to be a truly uncompromising director in his determination to show life as he sees it. Leigh was awarded the OBE for services to film in 1993.

WHEN WAS HE WORKING?
Leigh studied acting at RADA in 1960, but almost immediately took to directing for the stage. He worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 60s and directed his first film, the tellingly titled Bleak Moments, in 1971 based on his own production of the stage play. The BBC's Play For Today series saw Leigh shoot another of his plays, the now legendary Abigail's Party (1977), starring Alison Steadman as the vacuous, social-climbing Beverly, who throws a drinks party for her new neighbours. Stagy and (deliberately) claustrophobic, it remains a comic tour de force and won an incredible sixteen million viewers on its third showing. In 1988, Leigh was able to persuade Channel 4 and British Screen to finance a second feature (High Hopes) and he has been in production ever since.