For other uses of naked(ness), see Naked (disambiguation)

Naked is a 1993 British film directed by Mike Leigh. Before this film, Leigh was known for subtler comedic dissections of middle-class and working-class manners. Naked was more stark and brutal than his previous works. Leigh relied heavily on improvisation in the making of the film, but little actual ad-libbing was filmed; lengthy rehearsals in character provided much of the script. Almost all of the dialogue was filmed as written. The film received largely favourable reviews.

Plot[link]

After a sexual encounter with a married woman in an alley in Manchester turns into a rape, Johnny (David Thewlis) steals a car and flees for Dalston, 'a scrawny, unpretentious area' in the east of London, to seek refuge with his former girlfriend, fellow Mancunian Louise (Lesley Sharp).

Intelligent, educated and eloquent, Johnny is also deeply embittered and egotistical, fighting and provoking anyone he meets in order to prove his superiority. His behaviour is reckless, self-destructive and at times even sadistic; he seduces Louise's flatmate, Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), simply because he can, but soon gets tired of her and embarks on an extended latter-day odyssey among the destitute and despairing of the United Kingdom's capital city.

During his encounters in London's seedy underbelly, Johnny expounds his world-view (which in different instances seems to be fatalist, nihilist or transhumanist) at long and lyrical length to anyone who will listen, whether Archie, a Scottish boy he comes across in Brewer Street yelling 'Maggie!' at the top of his voice, or Brian, a security guard, of acres of empty space, a 'post-Modernist gas chamber', "whom Johnny marks down as indeed possessing the most tedious job in the world."^[1] All the while, the sinister presence of his ex-girlfriend's psychopathic landlord, Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell), lurks in the background. Johnny eventually suffers horribly at the hands of thugs in the most casual manner; and when the primary tenant of the flat (Claire Skinner) returns from a trip overseas, Johnny is compelled to leave, to throw himself back into the world as he has ostensibly done so many times before.

It is subtly hinted throughout the movie that Johnny's unusual personality and behavior could be the result of a variety of (presumably undiagnosed and untreated) medical conditions, including manic depression and whatever it is that causes him to experience episodic, severe headaches. These conditions are certainly affecting him physically; one of the characters he meets thinks he is about 40 years old, when he is only 27.

Cast[link]

• David Thewlis as Johnny
• Lesley Sharp as Louise Clancy
• Katrin Cartlidge as Sophie
• Greg Cruttwell as Jeremy G. Smart, also known as Sebastian Hawk
• Claire Skinner as Sandra the Nurse
• Peter Wight as Brian, the security guard
• Ewen Bremner as Archie the Scotsman with a tic
• Elizabeth Berrington as Giselle
• Gina McKee as The Cafe Girl

Notes[link]

Sheridan Morley described Johnny as, "Alfie in the grips of Thatcherite depression", - thus, according to the critic Michael Coveney, "cross fertilising Bill Naughton's chirpy cockney Lothario, immortalised by Michael Caine, with the dark sinister disaffection of the new underclass - a neat way of indicating that the Swinging Sixties had degenerated into the nauseated Nineties."^[2] Leigh had captured, according to Coveney, something of the anxiety, rootless cynicism, and big-city disaffection of the time.

Thewlis's background reading for the part of Johnny included Voltaire's Candide, the teachings of Buddha and James Gleick's Chaos.^[3]

Other echoes, cinematic and literary, that critics have detected in the film include William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning (one of Leigh's favourite films).^[4] Shakespeare's hero is marked by "talking incessantly to the audience and assuming a dominance over other characters through expressions of mania, and rapid, witty speech. Thewlis, ... wrapped like Hamlet in a black and inky coat, [is similarly] socially untethered but burdened with useless knowledge and a vicious, bullying line in repartee." Of the precedent of 'idiosyncratic, character-driven film-making' in Renoir's Boudu, Michael Coveney has observed: "Both Naked and Boudu explore the tension between the domesticated and the anarchic (this is a central theme, probably the theme running through Leigh's work), and focus this tension in the tragi-comedy of a central character."^[5]

In 1965 Leigh had teamed up with David Halliwell, hired the Unity Theatre for a fortnight, and directed the first production of Halliwell's Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs. According to Coveney, "Malcolm Scrawdyke is clearly a precursor of Johnny in Naked. Scrawdyke was a loutish art student and absurd ideologue from Huddersfield who had trouble with girls and a hatred for his teachers...the play shared a deeply felt schoolboy coarseness with Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, a piece originally written as a vicious attack on a loathed mathematics master."^[6]

The song sung by Johnny and Louise near the film's end, "Take me back to Manchester when it's raining," was one Leigh used to sing with his friends in Habonim ('the Builders'), the international socialist Jewish youth movement he joined as a schoolboy. After the film was released Leigh heard from a retired schoolmaster at Stand Grammar in Prestwich who had written the song for a school review in 1950.^[7]

Criticism[link]

Julie Burchill attacked the film in The Sunday Times, saying that Leigh's characters talked like lobotomized Muppets; they talked, she said, "sub-wittily, the way Diane Arbus's subjects look." And Suzanne Moore in The Guardian criticized the lethargic females whose lives Johnny routinely ruins: "What sort of realism is this? To show a misogynist and surround him with such walking doormats has the effect, intentional or not, of justifying this behaviour." Lesley Sharp (Louise) responded: "There are a lot of people who don't go to art house cinemas who do have deeply troubled lives and are at risk....We do actually live in a misogynistic, violent society and there are a lot of women in abusive relationships who find it very difficult to get out of them. And a lot of men, too." Coveney denied the relevance of the criticism: "Is there no room for irony, for the idea that in depicting horror in the sex war an artist is exposing them, not endorsing them? And who says that Sophie is an unwilling doormat or that Louise is a doormat at all? It is clear that the latter is taking serious stock of her relationship with Johnny. She exhibits both patience and tenderness in her dealings with him, whereas she finally pulls a knife on Jeremy."^[8]

Awards and nominations[link]

• Cinéfest: Best International Film (1993) (won)
• Cannes Film Festival (1993): Best Director (won)^[9]
• Cannes Film Festival (1993): Palme d'Or (nominated)^[9]
• Cannes Film Festival: Best Actor - David Thewlis (1993) (won)^[9]
• New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Actor - David Thewlis (1993)
• Toronto International Film Festival: Metro Media Award (1993) (won)
• Evening Standard British Film Awards: Best Actor - David Thewlis (1994)
• London Critics Circle Film Awards ALFS Award: British Actor of the Year - David Thewlis (1994)
• National Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Actor - David Thewlis (1994)
• BAFTA Awards Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film (1994) (nominated)
• Independent Spirit Awards: Best Foreign Film (1994) (nominated)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Catterall, Ali; Wells, Simon (2001). Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the Sixties. London: Fourth Estate. ISBN 978-1-84115-203-5. 
• Coveney, Michael (1996). The world according to Mike Leigh. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-255518-0. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Naked (film)

• Naked at the British Film Institute
• Naked at the Internet Movie Database
• Naked at the TCM Movie Database
• Naked at AllRovi
• Naked at Box Office Mojo
• Naked at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Guardian interviews Mike Leigh and David Thewlis
• [1] locations

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Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh, April 2008
Born	(1943-02-20) 20 February 1943 (age 69) Brocket Hall, Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England [1]
Spouse	Alison Steadman (1973-2001)

Mike Leigh, OBE (born 20 February 1943) is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design.^[2] He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between work for the theatre and making films for BBC Television, many of which were characterized by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. His well-known films include Life is Sweet (1990), the comedy-drama Career Girls (1997), the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic 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,^[3] the BAFTA-winning (and Oscar-nominated) Palme d'Or winner Secrets & Lies (1996) and Golden Lion winner Vera Drake (2004).

His films and stage plays, according to the critic Michael Coveney, "comprise a distinctive, homogenous body of work which stands comparison with anyone's in the British theatre and cinema over the same period." ^[4] Coveney further noted Leigh's role in helping to create stars – Liz Smith in Hard Labour, Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party, Brenda Blethyn in Grown-Ups, Antony Sher in Goose-Pimples, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Meantime, Jane Horrocks in Life is Sweet, David Thewlis in Naked – and remarked that the list of actors who have worked with him over the years – including Sheila Kelley, Paul Jesson, Phil Daniels, Lindsay Duncan, Lesley Sharp, Kathy Burke, Stephen Rea, Sam Kelly, Eric Richard, Julie Walters – "comprises an impressive, almost representative, nucleus of outstanding British acting talent." ^[5] Ian Buruma, writing in the New York Review of Books in January 1994, noted: "It is hard to get on a London bus or listen to the people at the next table in a cafeteria without thinking of Mike Leigh. Like other wholly original artists, he has staked out his own territory. Leigh's London is as distinctive as Fellini's Rome or Ozu's Tokyo."^[6]

Leigh begins his projects without a script, but starts from a basic premise which is developed through improvisation by the actors. Leigh works initially one-to-one with each actor, developing a character who is based, in the first place, on someone he or she knows. "The world of the characters and their relationships is brought into existence by discussion and a great amount of improvisation – that is, improvising a character. And research into anything and everything that will fill out the authenticity of the character." It is only after months of rehearsal, or 'preparing for going out on location to make up a film', that Leigh writes a shooting script, a bare scenario. Then, on the shoot, on location, after further 'real rehearsing', the script is finalised. "I'll set up an improvisation ,... I'll analyse and discuss it,... we'll do another, and I'll ... refine and refine... until the actions and dialogue are totally integrated. Then we shoot it." ^[7]

Further aspects of Leigh to note; "He is a gifted cartoonist; he is a northerner who came south, slightly chippy, fiercely proud (and critical) of his roots and Jewish background; and he is a child of the 1960s, and of the explosion of interest in the European cinema and the possibilities of television." ^[8]

Mike Leigh has been selected to be jury president of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival.^[9] After being nominated for, and awarded, some big prizes, it will be the first time that he will function as president of an international panel of judges at a film festival.^{[citation needed]}

Early life[link]

Leigh, having been born in Welwyn, (his mother, in her confinement, went to stay with her parents in Hertfordshire for comfort and support while her husband was serving as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps), was brought up in Broughton, Salford, Lancashire, the son of Phyllis Pauline (née Cousin) and Alfred Abraham Leigh, a doctor.^[10] Leigh's family was a Jewish immigrant one (whose surname was originally Lieberman, but this was anglicised in 1939, 'for obvious reasons.') ^{[11][12][13][14]} The war having come to an end Leigh's father began his career as a general practitioner in Higher Broughton, "the epicentre of Leigh's youngest years and the area memorialised in Hard Labour." ^[15] Leigh went to Salford Grammar School, as did the director Les Blair, his friend, who produced Leigh's first feature film Bleak Moments in 1971. There was a strong tradition of drama in the all-boys school, and an English master called Mr Nutter supplied the library with new plays the minute they were published.^[16] Outside of school Leigh thrived in the Manchester branch of Habonim. He attended summer camps and winter activities over the Christmas break all round the country in the last years of the 1950s. Throughout this time, (and though supplemented by his discovery of Picasso, Surrealism, The Goon Show, and even family visits to the Hallé Orchestra and the D'Oyly Carte), the most important part of his artistic consumption was the cinema. In 1960, 'to his utter astonishment', he won a scholarship to RADA. Initially trained as an actor at RADA, Leigh went on to start honing his directing skills at East 15 Acting School where he met the actress Alison Steadman.^[17]

Leigh responded negatively to RADA's agenda, found himself being taught how to 'laugh, cry and snog' for weekly rep purposes and so became a sullen student. He later attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (in 1963), the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and the London School of Film Technique in Charlotte Street. When he had arrived in London, one of the first films he had seen was Shadows, an 'improvised' film by John Cassavetes, in which a cast of unknowns was observed 'living, loving and bickering' on the streets of New York, and Leigh had "felt it might be possible to create complete plays from scratch with a group of actors." ^[18] Other influences from this time included Harold Pinter's The Caretaker – "Leigh was mesmerised by the play and the (Arts Theatre) production," – Samuel Beckett, whose novels he read avidly, and the surreal writing of Flann O'Brien, whose 'tragi-comedy' Leigh found particularly appealing. Influential and important productions he saw at this period included Beckett's Endgame, Peter Brook's King Lear, and in 1965, Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, a production developed through improvisations, the actors having based their characterisations on people they had visited in a mental hospital. The visual worlds of Ronald Searle,^[19] George Grosz, Picasso, and William Hogarth exerted another kind of influence. He played small roles in several British films in the early 1960s, (West 11,Two Left Feet), and played a young deaf-mute, interrogated by Rupert Davies, in the BBC TV series Maigret. In 1964/65 he teamed up with David Halliwell, and designed and directed the first production of Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs at the Unity Theatre.

Career[link]

Between 1965 and 1970 Leigh's activity was varied. In 1965 he went to work at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham as a resident assistant director and had the opportunity to start experimenting with the idea that writing and rehearsing could potentially be part of the same process. The Box Play, a family scenario staged in a cage-like box, "absorbed all sorts of contemporary ideas in art such as the space frames of Roland Pichet..it was visually very exciting," , and two more 'improvised' pieces followed.^[20] After the Birmingham interlude he found a flat in Euston, where he lived for the next ten years. In 1966/67 he worked as an assistant director with the Royal Shakespeare Company, assisting Peter Hall on (a disastrous) Macbeth, and on Coriolanus , and Trevor Nunn on a knockabout The Taming of the Shrew. He also worked on an improvised play with some professional actors on a play of his own called NENAA, (an acronym for the North East New Arts Assiociation), which explored the fantasies of a Tynesider working in a café, with ideas of founding an arts association in the north-east. Leigh wrote, in 1970; " I saw that we must start off with a collection of totally unrelated characters (each one the specific creation of its actor) and then go through a process in which I must cause them to meet each other, and build a network of real relationships; the play would be drawn from the results." After Stratford-upon-Avon Leigh directed a couple of London drama school productions that included Thomas Dekker's The Honest Whore at E15 Acting School in Loughton – where he met Alison Steadman for the first time. In 1968, wanting to return to Manchester, he sub-let his London flat and moved to Levenshulme. Taking up a part-time lectureship in a Catholic women teachers training college, Sedgley Park, he ran a drama course and devised and directed Epilogue, focusing on a priest with doubts, and for the Manchester Youth Theatre he devised and directed two big-cast projects, Big Basil and Glum Victoria and the Lad with Specs. As the decade came to a close Leigh knew he wanted to make films, and that "The manner of working was at last fixed. There would be discussions and rehearsals. Plays or films would develop organically with actors fully liberated into the creative process. After an exploratory improvisation period, Leigh would write a structure, indicating the order in which scenes happened, usually with a single bare sentence:Johnny and Sophie meet; Betty does Joy's hair; [etc..]And it was rehearsed and rehearsed until it achieved the required quality of 'finish'." ^[21]

In the 1970s, Leigh made nine television plays. Earlier plays such as Nuts in May and Abigail's Party tended more towards bleakly yet humorously satirising middle-class manners and attitudes. His plays are generally more caustic, stridently trying to show the banality of society.^{[citation needed]} Goose-Pimples and Abigail's Party both focus on the vulgar middle class in a convivial party setting that spirals out of control. The television version of Abigail's Party was made at some speed, Steadman was pregnant at the time, and Leigh's objections to flaws in the production, particularly the lighting, led to his preference for theatrical films.

There was something of a hiatus in Leigh's career following the death of his father at the end of February 1985. Leigh was in Australia at the time – having agreed to attend a screenwriters conference in Melbourne at the start of 1985, he had then accepted an invitation to teach at the Australian Film School in Sydney – and he then 'buried his solitude and sense of loss in a busy round of people, publicity and talks.' He gradually extended 'the long journey home' and went on to visit Bali, Singapore, Hong Kong, China. He said later, " The whole thing was an amazing, unforgettable period in my life. But it was all to do with personal feelings, my father, where to go next, and my desire to make a feature film. I felt I was at at the end of one stage of my career and at the start of another." His 1986 project codenamed 'Rhubarb' , for which he had gathered actors in Blackburn, including Jane Horrocks, Julie Walters and David Thewlis, was cancelled after seven weeks rehearsals and Leigh returned home. "The nature of what I do is totally creative, and you have to get in there and stick with it. The tension between the bourgeois suburban and the anarchist bohemian that is in my work is obviously in my life, too...I started to pull myself together. I didn't work, I simply stayed at home and looked after the boys." In 1987 Channel 4 put up some money for a short film and, with Portman Productions, agreed to co-produce Leigh's first feature film since Bleak Moments.^[22]

In 1988 then, he made High Hopes, about a disjointed working-class family whose members live in a run-down flat and a council house. Leigh's subsequent films such as Naked and Vera Drake are somewhat starker, more brutal, and concentrate more on the working-class; another of his recent films, however, is a modern-day comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky. A commitment to social realism and humanism is evident throughout. More specifically, several of his films and television plays examine the domestic relationships of ordinary people, which are brought to a head or transformed by some crisis towards the end of the film.

His stage plays include Smelling A Rat, It's A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Goose-Pimples, Ecstasy, and Abigail's Party.

The anger inherent in Leigh's material, in some ways typical of the Thatcher years, softened after her departure from the political scene. In 2005, Leigh returned to directing for the stage after many years absence with his new play, Two Thousand Years at the Royal National Theatre in London. The play deals with the divisions within a left-wing secular Jewish family when one of the younger members finds religion. It is the first time Leigh has drawn on his Jewish background for inspiration.

Leigh has won several prizes at major European film festivals. Most notably he won the Best Director award at Cannes for Naked in 1993 and the Palme d'Or in 1996 for Secrets & Lies. He won the Leone d'Oro for the best film at the International Venice Film Festival in 2004 with Vera Drake. He has been nominated for the Academy Award seven times, twice each for Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake (Best Original Screenplay and Best Directing) and once for Topsy-Turvy, Happy-Go-Lucky, and Another Year (Best Original Screenplay only). He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008.^[23]

Leigh has used a pool of actors regularly over the years, including Alison Steadman, Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Marion Bailey, Phil Davis, Jim Broadbent, David Thewlis, Sam Kelly Peter Wight, Imelda Staunton, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Claire Skinner, James Corden and the late Katrin Cartlidge.

Style[link]

Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and storylines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop, but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed. Initial preparation is in private with the director and then the actors are introduced to each other in the order that their characters would have met in their lives. Intimate moments are explored that will not even be referred to in the final film to build insight and understanding of history, character and inner motivation. When an improvisation needs to be stopped, he says to the actors: 'Come out of character,' before they discuss what's happened or what might have happened in a situation.^[24]

The critical scenes in the eventual story are performed and recorded in full-costumed, real-time improvisations where the actors encounter for the first time new characters, events or information which may dramatically affect their characters' lives. Final filming is more traditional as definite sense of story, action and dialogue is then in place. The director reminds the cast of material from the improvisations that he hopes to capture on film.

In an interview with Laura Miller, "Listening to the World: An Interview With Mike Leigh", published on salon.com, Leigh states, "I make very stylistic films indeed, but style doesn't become a substitute for truth and reality. It's an integral, organic part of the whole thing." Leigh's vision is to depict ordinary life, "real life", unfolding under extenuating circumstances.^{[clarification needed]} Speaking of his films, he says, "No, I’m not an intellectual filmmaker. These are emotional, subjective, intuitive, instinctive, vulnerable films. And there’s a feeling of despair…I think there’s a feeling of chaos and disorder."^[25] He makes courageous decisions to document reality. He speaks about the criticism Naked received: "The criticism comes from the kind of quarters where "political correctness" in its worst manifestation is rife. It's this kind of naive notion of how we should be in an unrealistic and altogether unhealthily over-wholesome way."^[26]

Leigh's characters often struggle, "to express inexpressible feelings.Words are important, but rarely enough. The art of evasion and failure in communication certainly comes from Pinter, whom Leigh acknowledges as an important influence. He especially admires Pinter's earliest work, and directed The Caretaker while still at RADA." ^[27]

Leigh has cited Jean Renoir and Satyajit Ray among his favourite film makers. The critic David Thomson has written that, with the camera work in his films characterised by 'a detached, medical watchfulness', Leigh's aesthetic may justly be compared to the sensibility of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Michael Coveney: " The cramped domestic interiors of Ozu find many echoes in Leigh's scenes on stairways and in corridors, and on landings, especially in Grown-Ups, Meantime, and Naked. And two wonderful little episodes in Ozu's Tokyo Story, in a hairdressing salon and a bar, must have been in Leigh's subconscious memory when he made The Short and Curlies (1987), one of his most devastatingly funny pieces of work, and the pub scene in Life is Sweet..." ^[28]

Leigh's style has been influential over a number of film companies. The youth film company ACT 2 CAM uses his improvisation techniques to build characters and context for films with young people in the UK. His character work, improvisations and unplanned scenes are a technique followed by East 15 School of Acting, where these methods continue to be taught and used at the forefront of the acting and directing training industry.

Personal life[link]

In September 1973 he married Alison Steadman; they have two sons: Toby (born February 1978)^[29] and Leo (born August 1981). Steadman appeared in seven of his films and several of his plays, including Wholesome Glory and Abigail's Party. They divorced in 2001.^[30] He now lives in Camden with costume designer Charlotte Holdich.

He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.^[31]

Filmography[link]

• Bleak Moments (1971)
• Hard Labour (1973)
• The Permissive Society (BBC Second City Firsts, 10/04/1975)
• Knock for Knock (BBC Second City Firsts, 11/21/1976)
• Nuts in May (BBC Play for Today, 13/01/1976)
• Abigail's Party (BBC Play for Today, 01/11/1977)
• Kiss of Death (1977)
• Who's Who (1978)
• Grown-Ups (1980)
• Home Sweet Home (1982)
• Meantime (1983)
• Four Days in July (BBC1, 1/29/1985)
• The Short and Curlies (1987) – short
• High Hopes (1988)
• Life Is Sweet (1990)
• A Sense of History (1992) – short
• Naked (1993)
• Secrets & Lies (1996)
• Career Girls (1997)
• Topsy-Turvy (1999)
• All or Nothing (2002)
• Vera Drake (2004)
• Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
• Another Year (2010)
• A Running Jump (2012) – short

List of plays[link]

• The Box Play (1965)
• My Parents Have Gone to Carlisle (1966)
• The Last Crusade of Five Little Nuns (1966)
• Individual Fruit Pies (1968)
• Glum Victoria and the Lad with Specs (1969)
• Bleak Moments (1970)
• A Rancid Pong (1971)
• Wholesome Glory (1973)
• The Jaws of Death (1973)
• Dick Whittington and His Cat (1973)
• Babies Grow Old (1974)
• The Silent Majority (1974)
• Abigail's Party (1977)
• Too Much of a Good Thing 1979; BBC radio
• Ecstasy (1979)
• Goose-Pimples (1981)
• Smelling a Rat (1988)
• Greek Tragedy (1989)
• It's a Great Big Shame! (1993)
• Two Thousand Years (2005)
• Grief (2011)

Recurring collaborators[link]

Actor	Bleak Moments (1971)	Hard Labour (1973)	Knock for Knock (1976)	Nuts in May (1976)	Abigail's Party (1977)	Kiss of Death (1977)	Who's Who (1978)	Too Much of a Good Thing (radio play) (1979)	Grown-Ups (1980)	Home Sweet Home (1982)	Meantime (1983)	Four Days in July (1985)	The Short and Curlies (1987)	High Hopes (1988)	Life is Sweet (1990)	Naked (1993)	Secrets & Lies (1996)	Career Girls (1997)	Topsy-Turvy (1999)	All or Nothing (2002)	Vera Drake (2004)	Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)	Another Year (2010)
Eric Allan	N			N				N
Emma Amos																	N				N
Michelle Austin																	N			N			N
Marion Bailey											N									N	N
Linda Beckett	N	N												N			N
Elizabeth Berrington																N	N				N
Brenda Blethyn									N								N
Brid Brennan												N							N
Jim Broadbent															N				N		N		N
Katrin Cartlidge																N		N	N
Simon Chandler							N														N
Ron Cook																	N		N
Allan Corduner																			N		N
Phil Davis							N	N	N					N			N				N		N
Edna Doré														N						N			N
Janine Duvitski					N				N
Karina Fernandez																						N	N
Sally Hawkins																				N	N	N
Marianne Jean-Baptiste																	N	N(composer)
Alex Kelly																				N	N
Sam Kelly			N				N		N										N	N
Clifford Kershaw		N				N
Lesley Manville								N	N					N			N		N	N	N		N
Oliver Maltman																						N	N
Eddie Marsan																					N	N
Daniel Mays																				N	N
Gary McDonald																	N			N
Wendy Nottingham													N				N		N		N
Stephen Rea												N			N
Martin Savage																			N	N	N		N
Andy Serkis																		N	N
Lesley Sharp																N					N
Ruth Sheen														N			N			N	N		N
Claire Skinner															N	N
Liz Smith	N	N															N
Timothy Spall										N					N		N		N	N
Imelda Staunton																					N		N
Alison Steadman		N		N	N								N		N		N		N
David Thewlis													N		N	N
Sylvestra Le Touzel													N									N
Joe Tucker																	N	N		N
Peter Wight											N					N	N				N		N

Further reading[link]

• Carney, Ray & Quart, Leonard, The Films of Mike Leigh - Embracing the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• Clements, Paul, The Improvised Play (London: Methuen, 1983) ISBN 0-413-50440-9 (pbk.)
• Coveney, Michael, The World According to Mike Leigh (London: HarperCollins, 1996)
• Movshovitz, Howie (ed.) Mike Leigh Interviews (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2000)
• Whitehead, Tony, Mike Leigh (British Film Makers) (Manchester University Press, 2007)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mike Leigh at the Internet Movie Database
• Mike Leigh at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Mike Leigh at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Mike Leigh at Contemporary Writers
• Mike Leigh on Happy-Go-Lucky and on childhood visits at grandparents in Hitchin, ITV Local Anglia interview 2008
• Mike Leigh live on Film Unlimited - The Guardian, 17 March 2000.
• Extensive Mike Leigh Biography and Filmography
• Interview with Leigh on Naked from 1994
• A Conversation with Mike Leigh - an in-depth interview with the director
• Mike Leigh: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast from the Brighton Festival, May 2008
• Mike Leigh interview in June 2008
• Interview with Barbara Ellen in New Statesman Magazine - 21 October 2010

David Thewlis
David Thewlis presenting The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas at the 2008 San Sebastian Film Festival.
Born	David Wheeler (1963-03-20) 20 March 1963 (age 49) Blackpool, Lancashire, England
Occupation	Actor, author, director, screenwriter
Years active	1987–present
Spouse	Sara Sugarman (1992–93)
Partner	Kate Hardie (??? – ???) Anna Friel (2001–2010; 1 child)

David Thewlis (born David Wheeler; 20 March 1963) is an English actor of stage and screen. His most commercially successful role to date has been that of Remus Lupin, in the Harry Potter film series. Other notable performances include his work in the films Timeline (2003), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), The Omen (2006), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), London Boulevard (2010) and War Horse (2011). He made his name known in 1993 with his performance of Johnny in Naked – for which he won multiple awards – became known publicly for his performance of main antagonist King Einon in the 1996 film Dragonheart. He has also done voice work in the films James and the Giant Peach (1996) and The Miracle Maker (2000).

Early life[link]

Thewlis, second of three children, was born David Wheeler in Blackpool, Lancashire, the son of Maureen (née Thewlis) and Alec Raymond Wheeler.^[1] Both of his parents worked at his father's shop, which sold toys in the summer and wallpaper and paint in the winter.^[1][2] As a teenager, he played in a rock band called QED, in which he, Cliff Ashcroft, Mark Fawl and Chris Swift wrote much of their own music and lyrics. QED played at some of the Blackpool hotels to earn money for equipment and their first recording session at Storm Studios in Blackpool. Later, Thewlis played lead guitar with a punk rock band called Door 66. As a musician he was "doing nicely, doing good" and did not want to be an actor. Thewlis was educated at Highfield High School (since renamed Highfield Humanities College), a state secondary school in Marton, Blackpool in North West England where his nickname, at least to his friends, was 'Sqwee'.

He enrolled in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London only because his friends did.^[2] Thewlis graduated in 1984. When he went to register with the actors' union, he intended to use Wheeler as his stage name, but a "David Wheeler" already existed. His mother's maiden name was the first that came to mind.

Career[link]

His first acting job was in a play entitled Buddy Holly at the Regal in Greenwich.^[2] Thewlis' first major film role was as the rambling street philosopher Johnny in Naked (1993; dir. Mike Leigh), for which he was named best actor by the National Society of Film Critics (United States), the London Film Critics Circle, the Evening Standard, the New York Film Critics' Circle and the Cannes Film Festival. The same year he appeared on television as a sexual predator named James Jackson in Prime Suspect 3, opposite Helen Mirren and Ciarán Hinds. Prior to this Thewlis's first television appearance was alongside Ken Jones in Valentine Park.

Through the 1990s, Thewlis appeared in a variety of films, mostly fantasy and period, including Restoration (1995), Black Beauty (1994), Total Eclipse (1995) with Leonardo DiCaprio, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Dragonheart (1996), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), opposite Brad Pitt (because of this film, Thewlis is barred from entering China). He was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Divorcing Jack (1998), and played Clov in a (2000) television film of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. Notable appearances also include Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998) and Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1 (2000), opposite Paul Bettany and Malcolm McDowell.

Thewlis auditioned for the role of Professor Quirrell in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but the part went to Ian Hart. Despite missing out on the first film, in 2004 Thewlis was cast as Remus Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban without having to audition, as he was director Alfonso Cuarón's first choice for the role. He accepted it on advice from Ian Hart, who told him that Lupin was "the best part in the book".^[3] He reprised the role in four other films in the series.

He also appears as an SS Commandant of a Nazi death camp, father of the main character in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Recent credits include Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Terrence Malick's The New World (2005) and The Omen (2006). As a director, he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Short Film for Hello, Hello, Hello (1995); he has also written, directed and starred in the feature Cheeky (2003). When researching for his role in Kingdom of Heaven, Thewlis went to the Hospitaller museum near his home, and the first thing he saw was a mannequin wearing the same costume that he wore in the film.^[2]

He plays the late Dr. Michael Aris, husband of Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, with Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh as Suu Kyi, in the upcoming biopic The Lady directed by Luc Besson.

Personal life[link]

Mulberry A/W 2001, Henry Bond's photograph depicts David with Anna Friel. The couple were reported to have been paid £50,000 to appear in the campaign.^[4]

In 1992, Thewlis married director Sara Sugarman; they divorced in 1994. He then had a relationship with Bill Oddie's daughter Kate Hardie.

In 2001, he began a relationship with actress Anna Friel, whom he met on a flight to Cannes. Friel had, coincidentally, starred in Sara Sugarman's 1999 film Mad Cows. They both starred in the 2003 film Timeline although they shared no scenes together.

Together they have one daughter, Gracie Ellen Mary Friel (born 9 July 2005).^[5] Thewlis noted that he was "excited" and "not at all scared" by fatherhood and that he loves children. If he was not an actor he would be a teacher as he believes "the most beautiful sound is a child laughing". During Friel's pregnancy he gave up smoking, began jogging and eating more healthily and lost weight.^[2] However the pair ended their relationship in late 2010.^[6]

Thewlis owns a converted Victorian ballroom in Clerkenwell. He also is often mistaken for fellow actor Rhys Ifans: "Twice a week, people come up to me and say, 'You were great in Notting Hill'. The public seem to think we are the same person."^[2] Thewlis has also written a novel called The Late Hector Kipling, published by Simon & Schuster in 2007.

Awards and nominations[link]

Thewlis has won the following awards for his work in Naked.

• Cannes Film Festival for Best Actor (1993)
• Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor (1993)
• London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actor of the Year (1993)
• National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor (1993)
• New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (1993)

Thewlis has also received the following awards:

• British Independent Film Awards – Richard Harris Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Film (2008)

Other award nominations include:

• BAFTA Award for Best Short Film – Hello, Hello, Hello (1995)
• British Independent Film Award for Best Performance by a British Actor in an Independent Film – Divorcing Jack (1998)
• Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor – Basic Instinct 2 / The Omen (2006)
• Monte-Carlo Television Festival: Golden Nymph for Outstanding Actor – Drama Series – The Street (2007)
• Evening Standard British Film Awards: Peter Sellers Award for Comedy – London Boulevard (2010)

Filmography[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

Bibliography[link]

• The Late Hector Kipling (2007)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: David Thewlis

• David Thewlis at the Internet Movie Database
• Thewlis Rox

Eric Stoltz
Stoltz promoting Caprica, April 2009
Born	Eric Hamilton Stoltz (1961-09-30) September 30, 1961 (age 50) Whittier, California, US
Occupation	Actor, director, producer
Years active	1978–present

Eric Hamilton Stoltz (born September 30, 1961)^[1] is an American actor, director and producer. He is widely known for playing the role of Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film Mask, which earned him the nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.^[2] Stoltz has appeared in a wide variety of films from mainstream fare like Some Kind of Wonderful to independent films like Pulp Fiction, Killing Zoe, and Kicking and Screaming. He recently portrayed Daniel Graystone in the science fiction television series Caprica.

Early life[link]

Stoltz was born in Whittier, California, the son of Evelyn B. (née Vawter),^[3] a violinist and schoolteacher who died in 1994, and Jack Stoltz, an elementary school teacher.^[4] He has two sisters, mezzo soprano Catherine Stoltz^[5] and writer Susan R. Stoltz.^[6] He was raised in both American Samoa and Santa Barbara, California, where as a child, he once earned money playing piano for local musical theatre productions.^[7] He attended the University of Southern California, but dropped out after his junior year.^[8] When he moved to New York for his studies in 1981, he met Stella Adler and Peggy Feury.^[9]

Career[link]

1978–1999[link]

In the 1970s Stoltz joined a repertory company that performed ten plays at the Edinburgh Festival. He returned to the United States in 1979, when he entered USC as a drama student, but subsequently dropped out to pursue film and TV roles.^[10] In 1978, he was cast as Steve Benson in the TV adaptation of Erma Bombeck's The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank.^[11]

Director Cameron Crowe and Stoltz became friends while making Stoltz's first feature film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). According to Stoltz, Crowe promised Stoltz a role in all of his future films.^[12] He appeared in each of Crowe's next four films, The Wild Life, Say Anything..., Singles, and Jerry Maguire.

Originally cast as Marty McFly for Back to the Future in 1985, he was replaced after five weeks of filming, when Michael J. Fox (the director's first choice for the role) agreed to divide time between the movie and his television sitcom, Family Ties.^[13] The director, Robert Zemeckis, said that while Stoltz provided an admirable performance, it lacked the precise comedic sense that Zemeckis was seeking.^[14] Some of the original footage, where Stoltz does not appear but was on set, was used in the film.^[15] This was referenced in a 2010 episode of Fringe where, in an alternate universe, a theater marquee reads "Back to the Future starring Eric Stoltz".^[16]

In 1985, Stoltz garnered attention with a Golden Globe nomination starring as Rocky Dennis in Mask. Among other roles in the 1980s, he appeared in the 1987 hit, John Hughes's Some Kind of Wonderful.

During the 1990s, Stoltz went back and forth between stage, film, and television, appearing in studio and independent films such as Independent Spirit Award Winner Pulp Fiction (1994) and Sundance Festival Winner The Waterdance (1992). He also produced the films Bodies, Rest & Motion in 1993, Sleep with Me in 1994, and Mr. Jealousy in 1997. He continued to appear on the New York stage both on Broadway (Three Sisters, Two Shakespearean Actors, Arms and the Man) and off-Broadway (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Glass Menagerie, Sly Fox and Our Town). He was nominated for a Tony Award as Featured Actor for his performance as George Gibbs in the 1989 Broadway revival of Thorton Wilder's Our Town.^[17] A performance of this production was featured on Great Performances: Live From Lincoln Center, which received a 1989 Emmy nomination.^[18]