The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.
Mike LeighI mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.
Mike LeighResolve was never stronger than in the morning, after the night, when it was never weaker
Mike LeighI hate period films - and there are plenty of them - where they say, "Let's not do contemporary language because the audience won't understand it;" "let's not make the girls wear corsets, because it's not sexy" and all that sort of thing. Gradually it disintegrates into a no man's land: you don't really believe it's a period scene and it doesn't feel like it's now because it's not now. You don't feel it's quite real and you don't believe in it.
Mike Leigh