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You have explored social issues, whether that's unemployment in meantime, or back street abortion in vera drake, or class and race in secrets and lies, do you regard yourself as a political film—maker? yes, i do. i mean, i think that my films, with the arguable exception of peterloo, which is obviously about the peterloo massacre and is, without any question, a simple statement about democracy, i think my films must be understood to be implicitly political, rather than overtly political. you once said, i'm going to quote you here, "i know i return endlessly "to the same preoccupations, but i...

Rather than overtly political. you once said, i'm going to quote you here, "i know i return endlessly to the same preoccupations, "but i'm not always aware of it initially." what are those preoccupations, do you think? well, i mean, if you look at my films and plays, you know, about how we live, relationships, work, responsibility, surviving, secrets and lies, you know, the stuff of living really. class? and class, yes. it's funny, it's interesting, i didn't put that instinctively at the top of the list, but fair do's, you know. could you characterise a typical mike leigh film? what sort of fi...

But it was there that i had a really seminal experience as an artist. we were all sitting around... ..and had a nude model, and everybody was quietly drawing away, and i looked around the room, and i thought, what is happening in this room is something that we never experienced for one split second at the royal academy of dramatic art. really creative work is happening, everybody in the room is looking at something that's real and finding an organic, truthful way of expressing it, which we didn't do as student actors. it was all mechanical and superficial and inorganic, and therefore dull. and...

Against the eunuchs, a play by david halliwell. you've described this experience as a life—changing experience. why? because... david halliwell, who was a close friend and a very talented guy, he's no longer with us, but he wrote the play so that he could play the main character, malcolm scrawdyke, and to cut a long story short, he was impossible to direct. he'd say, "oh, a director's just a chairman." i'd say, "why don't you move over there on that...?" he'd say, "why? "i could move there, i could move anywhere." and so... at this point, i'd already... we'd talked about this, i'd already fo...

Are used to go to the movies, i used to watch westerns, from the earliest age, i remember there were two things, one major thing i always thought about, wouldn't it be great if you could have a film where the characters in the film were like real people, not like actors, and the other thing, a far less significance, or no importance at all is watching westerns, because of the nature of the number of frames and the length of film, the wheels on a vehicle, a stagecoach would go around backwards, and i used to think when i make films, there will go around the right way, and it was a very early ag...