FORA.tv Speaker - Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh, OBE is an English film and theater director, screenwriter, and playwright. He studied theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and did his early acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company[citation needed]. He began as a theater director and playwright in the 1960s, and then in the 1970s, he made the transition to television plays, many of which were characterized by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. Some of his well-known films include Life is Sweet (1990), the Gilbert and Sullivan biography Topsy Turvy (1999), and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing (2002). His most notable works are arguably Naked (1993) for which he won the Best Director award at Cannes, the BAFTA-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Secrets & Lies (1996) and Vera Drake (2004).