Mike Leigh, one of the independent movie world’s most celebrated directors with a career spanning six decades and wins including multiple BAFTA and both a Palme d’Or and Golden Lion, has said he’s likely to be hanging up his filmmaking boots.
Speaking at a Golden Globes-hosted event in London, the 83-year-old said that “Tender Loving Care,” his latest feature, would probably the last he directs.
“Absolutely. I think very likely, yes,” he told Variety‘s sister publication Indiewire when asked whether the film — recently added to the lineup at Toronto — would be his final feature. “I mean, I know the girls don’t like to hear me say that, but I think that is the case.”
Leigh has spoken previously about his struggles with myositis, a disease where the immune system attacks the muscles and has severly impacted his mobility.
“I was lucky in making this last film — people were very helpful,” he added at the roundtable. “You’ll see when I get up that my two friends all helped me to stand up. So I probably can’t do much more. And doing a play is even more physically demanding, strangely enough, than making a film, because on a film you can be moved around.”
“Tender Loving Care” is a comedy drama starring Leigh’s longtime collaborator and partner Marion Bailey alongside Paul Jesson (“All or Nothing”), Kate O’Flynn (“Happy-Go-Lucky”) and Alice Bailey Johnson (“Hard Truths“) that has been wrapped in typical Leigh secrecy since it was first unveiled. Plot details are unknown aside from it being a “an insightful exploration of the contemporary world.”
Frequent collaborators behind the camera include costume designer Jacqueline Durran, hair and make-up designer Nora Robertson, production designer Jane Brodie, composer Gary Yershon, editor Tania Reddin, director of photography Lucy Bristow and casting director Nina Gold.
As with his previous, critically acclaimed previous film “Hard Truths,” Bleecker Street and StudioCanal are distributing the film in the U.S. and U.K., respectively.
Were “Tender Loving Care” to be Leigh’s last, it would bring to an end a glittering career of an iconoclast filmmaking and the director of beloved films such as “Naked,” “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “Another Year, “Life Is Sweet,” “Mr. Turner” and “Secrets & Lies.”
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