The Believer – Interview with film director Mike Leigh

This article is a 2008 interview with British film director Mike Leigh.

“Instead of coming to rehearse and shoot a film with a prewritten script, Leigh works closely and intensively with all of his actors—from the main roles to bit parts—developing characters, scenarios, and dialogue over months of solo and group improvisations to build a finalized screenplay.

Actors seem to love the director’s way of involving them so integrally in the process: “I first worked with Mike Leigh in 1980,” Blethyn says. “He likes you to invent the whole history of the character, and I’ve done it ever since.”

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