Mike Leigh, OBE is an English 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. 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 characterised by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. His well-known films include Life is Sweet, the comedy-drama Career Girls, the Gilbert and Sullivan biographical film Topsy-Turvy, and the bleak working-class drama All or Nothing. His most notable works are arguably Naked for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the BAFTA-winning Palme d'Or winner Secrets & Lies and Golden Lion winner Vera Drake. 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." 

February 20th, 1943 in Brocket Hall (Age 81)