Mike Leigh: 'I do what I've been doing since I was a tiny lad'

It’s 30 years since Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste worked together on the Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies.

Now reunited on his BAFTA-nominated film Hard Truths, 82-year-old Leigh says he's delighted to be working again with Jean-Baptiste, who he describes as a “consummate character actor.”

English screenwriter, producer and director Leigh has a film, theatre, and television career spanning more than 60 years. He is famous for his improvisational techniques, where actors build characters and stories through rehearsal.

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In Hard Truths, Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman “wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades.”

“She's a consummate character actor. She's brilliant at doing the kind of work that I do with actors, she's got a great sense of humour, she's got a great passion for life,” Leigh told RNZ’s Culture 101.

All of us know a Pansy, he said, and they "had a ball" developing her character.

“The paradox of Pansy, of course, is this is a woman with no sense of humour that's capable of saying some very funny things.

“She doesn't know they’re funny, really, but that gave us a lot of scope.”

Teasing out characters and stories in this way has long been Leigh’s stock in trade.

“I've been doing it for 60 years, it's how I do it. In a way, I'm way past preferring it to a conventional way of working, because I hardly ever did a conventional way of working. It just is the way I work.”

The process is an “investigation, an interaction,” he said.

“It's hands-on, it's organic, it's communal.

“I couldn't sit in a room and write. I certainly couldn't have written any of the films I've made sitting in a room with a word processor.”

True to Leigh’s collaborative method, his production designer played a big part in creating Pansy’s world.

“Suzie Davis, who's just lately designed Conclave, for example, she's a brilliant designer, I've worked with her a few times. She's just very good at collaborating with me and the actors to create the right world.

“Pansy’s world is sterile. When Marianne and Suzie Davis were talking into existence what Pansy’s home would be like at one point, Marianne said, ‘Well, she'd have a white carpet.’ And Suzie said, ‘Well, that would get dirty’. And apparently Marianne said, ‘Not in Pansy’s house it wouldn't'.”

Pansy’s sister Chantelle, played by Michele Austin, couldn’t be more different, Leigh said.

“This is a woman who hates animals and birds and foxes and flowers and dirt, whereas she's got a sister who enjoys life, enjoys informality and flowers and plants and clutter and laughter. I mean, it was there to explore.”

Leigh has been “lucky” he said to enjoy a career of artistic independence.

“The first film I made was backed almost entirely by Albert Finney, who was very generous because he'd made a lot of money out of Tom Jones.“

Leigh refined his method in the theatre before the BBC hired him in the 1970s, during which time, he produced such works as Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party.

“The BBC in the ‘70s, was a period when it was very, very creative, and there was real freedom to do what you wanted.”

The world continues to offer up stories to him, Leigh said.

“People say to me, where'd you get your ideas for a film? Well, I walk down the street and see 10 people, and there's 10 possible films there, as far as I'm concerned.

“I do what I've been doing since I was a tiny lad, which is to clock the world and want to do something with it.”