
Mike Leigh famously says his method of filmmaking is to “devise and direct,” meaning, his actors devise their characters under Leigh’s guidance. Through the process, he discovers the movie’s story and dialogue which he then directs.
In 15 features — Hard Truths being his latest — Leigh created a body of work that’s inspired by life as it’s lived, instead of prescribing how life should be lived. The British filmmaker accepts that his filmography inspired a generation of filmmakers, like Anora director Sean Baker, who draws from Leigh’s social-realist films as one of his many references.
“Maybe I make films for other people to pastiche later,” he says. “If so, great, but it’s pretty academic, as far as I’m concerned.”
Leigh hopes his movies continue to confound and delight audiences. Where the message of Baker’s films is clear — that sex workers are people and sex work is real work — since 1971’s Bleak Moments, Leigh has sought to make the message of his movies anything but black and white.

The director does it by sneaking up on his audience. Before you know it, a comedic scene pushes into the territory of tragedy, or a dramatic scene is treated with unexpected humor and grace.
1993’s Naked, starring David Thewlis as a loquacious intellectual and conspiracy theorist, was a high point for the director. Leigh’s brand of black comedy and drama was awarded the Best Actor and Best Director prizes at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.
A lifelong admirer of the comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan, Leigh made his 1999 film Topsy-Turvy about the duo’s creative turmoil to write one of their most famous works, The Mikado.
Leigh returns with Hard Truths, a darkly humorous and compassionate exploration of family.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste stars as Pansy, a woman consumed by fear and rage, stoked by Covid lockdowns. Michele Austin plays her easygoing sister, a single mother surrounded by a warm family life. The film delves into the complexities of kinship, duty, and the enduring bond of love despite Pansy’s years of inner turmoil.
We talked with Leigh about turning truth into drama.
Joshua Encinias: Do you consciously avoid referencing other movies in your work? Hard Truths feels drawn from reality, which gives the movie its own cinematic language. It’s like your creations are the things others will reference later.
Mike Leigh: Well, look, to be honest, you could say many filmmakers, very legitimately and very successfully, make movies about movies. I don’t make movies about movies. I’m not interested in making movies about movies and I never have. I make movies about real life, about people, but with reference to what you said, that isn’t to say that I am not a seasoned and sophisticated movie watcher. I’ve been watching movies since about 1946.
I’m passionate about movies and I spent all my childhood and teens up till 1960 watching movies all the time in Manchester, but we didn’t get to see anything that wasn’t Hollywood or British movies. Then I went to London, where I discovered World Cinema. All sorts of filmmakers have, if you like, influenced me, but I’ve never ever consciously had another film or filmmaker in mind when shooting my own films because that’s not what it’s about. It’s about life, about people out there, if you like.
One of the things you just said, which is interesting and I’ve never thought about, is you said, I make films for other people to pastiche later. Well, that’s never occurred to me either. Maybe it does happen and if so, great, but it’s pretty academic, as far as I’m concerned.
Joshua Encinias: I know you devise and direct the story in rehearsals, but what premise for Hard Truths did you bring to financiers and collaborators?
Mike Leigh: Nothing.
Joshua Encinias: Nothing.
Mike Leigh: As usual, we want to make a film, there’s no script, and we can’t tell you what it’s about because we don’t know. We’re going to find that out on the journey of making the film. We won’t discuss casting, and please don’t interfere with it at any stage of the proceedings. Give us the money please and we’ll make it.
Only two things are going to happen. Either they say “Yes, great, here’s the money, off you go,” or they tell us to get lost. Mostly the latter happens. [Laughs.]
Mike Leigh on Inspiration and Hard Truths

Joshua Encinias: So what inspires you to make each movie? Do you say, “Well, time to make another movie, and let’s see what happens”?
Mike Leigh: Yes, at one level. But here’s the thing, you can ask this question of any sort of artist, whether people paint or write novels or write plays or make poetry or sculpture or make music or whatever. You discover what the thing is by the process of doing it. You interact with the material, you get messages back from the material that feeds back into the next move you make, etc. But at the same time, I have preoccupations and notions and ideas. Some of which I’m conscious of and some of which are there to be dragged up from the subconscious to the conscious surface during the course of making it. And indeed, there’s all sorts of elements in all of my films which would never have occurred to me until we started exploring and digging around and growing the thing in an organic way.
Joshua Encinias: Have you ever had to replace an actor who can’t work with your method of improvisation?
Mike Leigh: A couple of times I’ve had to say goodbye to an actor, but for other reasons, not relevant to your question. But the short answer to the question is no, it’s never cropped up because people join in. It’s exciting and stimulating and a rich experience, I think.
Joshua Encinias: Again, given your improvisational style of making movies, what do you think of movies that are all but engineered by causes or think tanks to win awards to bring more attention to the cause?
Mike Leigh: Frankly, in a word, it depends on the movie. A good movie is a good movie and if it’s that kind of movie and a good movie, then that’s what it is and that’s great and I’m up for it. I will watch it with enthusiasm as a movie watcher, a moviegoer, and an Academy voter. [Laughs.] It’s a bad film, it’s a bad film, whatever kind of film it is. And certainly, my view of what other people do is in no way defined by what I do.
Joshua Encinias: How did you come up with the name Pansy for Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s character and should the audience derive any meaning from it?
Mike Leigh: No, they shouldn’t. I mean, they will because people tend to do those things. No, not at all. We did what we always do. We sat down, the three of us, Michele Austin — who plays Chantelle — and Marianne, and we just made lists of the names that people from that particular Jamaican background would have. And Pansy seemed like a good one for this particular character who was evolving at the time we were doing it. But there is no literal significance.
Joshua Encinias: Hard Truths finds humor through trauma and grief. It reminds me comedy and drama are not that far apart: It just depends on the angle from which you’re looking at the story.
Mike Leigh: Well, life is comic and tragic. That’s how it comes out of the scene, so to speak. That is an unavoidable fact. People have said to me… and I know you’re not asking me this, people say, “You’ve decided to make it funny to start with and then suddenly it stops being funny.” I haven’t decided that at all. That is simply a function of what we’re looking at. Of course, there is a point in the film, a moment where the joke is over, where, but it isn’t that I’ve constructed it in a kind of self-conscious way. “This is a comedy and that’s a tragedy.” That just has nothing to do with it, really. It’s just a function of what’s going on and the important things that we are now focusing our attention on as the drama organically develops.
Joshua Encinias: It’s been 29 years since you worked with Marianne Jean-Baptiste as an actress in Secrets & Lies in 1996, but in 1997 she collaborated with you to compose the music for Career Girls. Is it different working with her as a musician?
Mike Leigh: It’s only the difference between working with an actor and working with a composer. I mean, no more than that. She does a wonderful score for Career Girls and it’s the only jazz score for any of my films. She sings some of it herself and it’s very sensitive and very appropriate for the film. Obviously, when we were doing it, neither she nor I were thinking, “I’m not acting now. I’m composing.”
Joshua Encinias: Why do you think North American audiences are so warm toward your work?
Mike Leigh: I don’t really know the answer to that and it’s not something that I think I can usefully analyze. What is interesting, however, in the context of your question, is this: For years and years, we couldn’t make indigenous, serious films in the UK. It was impossible. And all of us that were lucky enough to do so made our films for television, mostly the BBC television, Ken Loach and all the rest of us. It wasn’t until the new television channel started, Channel 4 in the UK, whose job was to put money into independent projects, that it became possible to make movies.
During the period, the exile period, when we couldn’t make indigenous films, from time to time I would try and pursue ways of finding the money to make a film. One day I went to see an American guy, a nice producer who had lived in London, and to talk to him about the possibility. And he said this to me. “Look, your problem is this: You will never make a feature film because for a film to succeed, it has to succeed in America in the States. And your films will never work in the States because people won’t understand them. They won’t know what they’re about.” I was blighted by this doomed prospect until, you know, we made Bleak Moments, my first film, which I made when I was 28.
If ever you look up Roger Ebert’s review of that in the Chicago Sun-Times, I mean, man, it’s one of the greatest reviews you could get ever. From there on in, to a greater or lesser extent, my films have seemed to have worked this side of the Atlantic. Indeed some of the backing — including for Hard Truths, where Bleecker Street was involved, both as backers and distributors — the supporters came from the United States. We’ve had success at the Toronto Film Festival.
But I can’t really answer the question why… Here’s the thing, I suppose I can at one level. It isn’t for me to say, but the truth is, I think the subject matter is universal. I think it resonates with people. Although, of course, they are British movies and they’re very much rooted in their milieu, in the culture and the cultural and social landscape of the UK, England in particular. Nevertheless, they’re not, in that sense, parochially local. The subject matter is universal. And that may be the answer to your question.
Joshua Encinias: I presume that Hard Truths is your cinematographer Dick Pope’s final work, and I’m curious how you are processing his loss.
Mike Leigh: It’s profoundly painful and it’s now about six or seven weeks since he died and it’s terrible. He and I collaborated on everything I’ve done on film since 1990, since Life is Sweet. He was a great guy, a great artist, a great cinematographer, a great collaborator. What else can I say? It’s tough, it really is. He knew Hard Truths had been successful at the Toronto and New York film festivals, and indeed at San Sebastian. And he died just as it was all in the London Film Festival. So he knew that it had good reactions.
Joshua Encinias: Will you make movies with a different cinematographer?
Mike Leigh: Well, I want to make another movie and by definition, I will have to make it with another cinematographer. [Laughs.] One thing that is certain is that Dick Pope would say, “For goodness sake, get on with it and do it with somebody else,” because he was that sort of a guy, you know.