Queer View: In all of your films there is a special kind of humour. Do you think this humour works in the whole of Europe? Are you a humourous person?

Mike Leigh: I think I am a humorous person. The humour, I don´t know, it might be English or British humour, but I think to a considerable degree it´s a kind of humour that people do understand because its about people, its about how we live, how we are, so I dont think that it´s exclusivly British.

QV: In Secrets and Lies I was astonished that you chose to give the role of the adopted child to a black woman. In this case it´s not the point at all that she is black.

Mike Leigh: Well I think you are right, it´s not essentially important that she is black, because you could have told the story at what she´d been white of course. But since when a woman has a baby, which she doesn´t know about, the point is that the baby becomes a person and you have no idea of what person it is. I thought it would be interesting that she obviously would have been with a black guy at some stage and would have forgotten about that. It would be interesting to see what happened when that would be an additional difference. As a matter of fact there were quite a number of black babies born to white girls that went to adoption in the 1960/70ies. It helped me to make a film as well that did have a racial content, at the sense that finally everybody is positive and they deal with the fact that she is black. The way they do is a statement on how we should behave.

QV: You do have a special way of casting your actors.

Mike Leigh: I generally cast actors first and then develop the story with working with them. In the case of Secrets and Lies it was for six months before shooting anything, just to invent the characters, invent the world of the film and then to make the film up as we go along and structure it and really script it and develop it while filming, using a lot of inprovisation, building it up so what we shoot is very precise.

QV: And how do you choose an actor in the first place?

Mike Leigh: Well, they have to be good actors, they have to have a good sense of humour, they have to be character actors, people that don´t play just themselves, but are versatile and are able to play lots of sorts of people, they got to be actors who are able to work in an ensemble, together. Actors who have a generous spirit.

QV: As it is so what is more important to you, the social issue of the movie or the ensemble acting while shooting a film?

Mike Leigh: These things are inseperable, they are both important. The visual cinematografic side is as important as the acting. The ensemble is important because thats what makes it work, but it would be all pointless, if it did have no social meaning, so for me all this things are inseperable.

QV: You made a short movie (A Sense of History, 1992) and it is not about the working class people.

Mike Leigh: I thought it´s an amusing idea. I mean, it vaguely says things about this kind of guys, they exist. I make films about people, and even a guy like that is a person.

QV: It´s got very black humour.

Mike Leigh: Yes.

QV: What is your next project about?

Mike Leigh: My next film is called Carrier Girls and it is finished, it will be out next year. It´s a film which intercuts between the 1990's and the 1980's.

Also see "Felix".

Picture: Scene of Secrets and Lies, with Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR: PANDORA)