Mike Leigh is an award-winning playwright, theatre and film director, and screenwriter. Born in Welwyn Garden City in 1943, he grew up in Salford, Lancashire. He moved to London as a young man to take up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA, however he dropped out as he did not like the course or its teaching methods. He graduated from the London School of Film Technique, where he began to develop his distinctive improvisation techniques.
Leigh’s work is distinctive for its detailed, organic content and his lengthy, improvisational rehearsal style. He begins his projects without a script, but starts from a basic premise that is then developed through improvisation by the actors. His first play, The Box Play (1965) was developed at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham, where he worked as resident assistant director. He then became the assistant director at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 to 1967. Leigh wrote a string of television plays throughout the 1970s, including his best known work, Abigail's Party, which was originally written for the stage. Subsequent plays include Ecstasy (1979), Greek Tragedy (1989), Two Thousand Years (2005), and Grief (2011).
Leigh has also written and directed extensively for film, achieving critical praise for works such as Secrets and Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999), Vera Drake (2004), Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010), and the biopics Mr. Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2018).
Leigh is noteworthy for both writing and directing all of his work, which is essential to the collaborative way in which he works. He has received seven Academy Award nominations, but lost out each time, and has been awarded three BAFTA awards for his work on film.
More about Mike Leigh
