Mike Leigh: a life on stage – in pictures

The grandchild of Jewish immigrants (their surname tactfully abbreviated from 'Liebermann' in 1939), Mike Leigh grew up in suburban Manchester, before moving to London at the age of 17 to take up a scholarship at Rada. Among his early theatre jobs was working as assistant to Peter Hall in his disastrous production of Macbeth. This is him pictured a few years later, in 1981 Photograph: Ed Hamilton West / the Guardian

Abigail’s Party was first performed in April 1977, having been devised in just a few weeks by Leigh and five actors as something to fill the schedules at the Hampstead theatre. A viciously observed comment on middle-class aspiration, the show was an instant hit. It also created – in the form of Alison Steadman’s Beverley, centre – one of the most famous monsters in British drama Photograph: Donald Cooper/Photostage

The BBC adaptation of Abigail’s Party, which featured four out of five of the original cast, was an even greater triumph, being watched by 16 million viewers. Not all of them approved, however: 'It was a prolonged jeer,' said Dennis Potter, 'twitching with genuine hatred, about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower-middle classes'
Photograph: BBC

Nuts in May, which tells the story of a miserable camping trip, was devised as a television play in 1976, and is still much loved by Leigh aficionados. 'The minute anything extraordinary or exotic happens, I get bored,' says Leigh. 'Most movies are about extraordinary or charmed lifestyles. For me, what's exciting is finding heightened drama, the extraordinary in the ordinary, what happens to ordinary people' Photograph: Channel 4

Two Thousand Years marked Leigh’s return to theatre directing, in 2005, after an absence of more than a decade. The show’s entire run sold out before the first night, and was universally admired by critics. 'What I admire most,' Michael Billington wrote at the time, 'is Leigh's ability to link family life with the big issues of the day' Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Film director Mike Leigh poses for a portrait in London that same year, just as his film Vera Drake was released. It went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice Photograph: Adrian DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

Ecstasy (1979), another play written for Hampstead, featured four people all differently unhappy in their menial jobs, stuck in the middle of the recession. 'Critics often accuse me and my actors of being middle-class intellectuals making stuff up about the working classes,' says Leigh. 'But everything we do, as in Ecstasy, is based on who and what we’ve experienced ourselves.' Here Leigh is pictured with the cast of a West End revival of the play, mounted in 1998
Photograph: Ken Towner / Evening Standard /

Famous for building up scripts through improvisation, Leigh had never revived one of his own plays before Hampstead's new production of Ecstasy. 'On the whole this is not something I’m remotely interested in,' he told the Telegraph. 'I’ve been very happy for other people to do endless productions of Abigail’s Party and the other plays. But I’m especially fond of this play. It plumbs depths' Photograph: Tristram Kenton