Mike Leigh Quotes

I don't know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighbourhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered A movies.

As a kid, my dad would take me to see indie films when I would visit him in New York. Films that I just wouldn't see growing up in the Bay Area.

I'm a lot less travelled as an adult than I was as a child, but I think living in far flung places gives you a perspective on the world and people that adds flavour to your writing.

Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn't an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn't know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.

Going to the movies was a big event in my youth. My father would be the initiator - he'd have me put on a jacket to see a film.

If I rewind back to that period, I was 8 in 1977 when 'Star Wars' was in theaters. I saved up money, or my parents got me the 'Art of Star Wars' book.

My first trip to Mexico was with my dad because of his Spanish records. That was back in 1958. I found a picture of me when I was eight dressed as a little senorita.

My boy cousins used to sit my older brother and me down and take us through a film-studies course. It included 'Tremors', 'The Goonies', and, of course, 'Star Wars'. That was when it began: sitting cross-legged watching as the opening crawl goes up the screen.

I love the 'Percy Jackson' movies. That was my big break. I love the people I worked with. It was a really magical experience for me.

I was reared on American TV and films. There was a huge sense of occasion about going to the cinema in Moy in the late 1950s and early '60s, and I absolutely loved those Hollywood sword-and-sandal movies like Ben-Hur and the dime-a-dozen cowboy-and-Indian films, as we then referred to them.

None of my family is in the industry. But I watched movies like an insane person when I was a child. I used to make my dad stop at the video store every time we drove past it, and you had to drive past the video store to get to our house.

I have been watching Hollywood films from childhood.

I'm glad I did South films because I feel they have moulded me. They are really loud and are in a different language, so it's not easy.

I grew up watching American movies. My favorite movies have always been American, since as long as I can remember. I always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors.

We didn't have a movie theatre until I was about nine, so I just didn't see them. But, once I got into movies I loved them.

Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.

Hollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.

Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.

I had a great time working on the movies, both the major movies I've done. I've had a great time. I like the people in Hollywood a lot.

I was born in London and lived there until I was five. We traveled a lot. But really San Diego is my hometown. It's where I went to high school.

I'd never been in one of those great big blockbusters.

I just didn't see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn't have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me.

They're lacking culture in Hollywood. That gives me a big up, right? I know something about pop culture.

In its heyday, Hollywood reflected, if it did not actually produce, the sexual climate of our land.