Mike FIGGIS

Mike Figgis is something of a renaissance figure whose work spreads across theatre, television, film and music. As well as directing, he frequently writes the scripts for his films as well as the music score. His career also belongs as much to American cinema as it does British. He was born in Carlisle on 28 February 1948, raised in Nairobi until he was eight and then returned with his family to Newcastle. His career started in pop music with the band Gas Board (whose singer was a young Bryan Ferry), followed by a period studying music in London. He joined the avant-garde theatre group The People Show before going on to form his own theatrical company, The Mike Figgis Group, in 1980. He started to experiment with the use of film in his theatre work, which led to a commission from Channel 4 for a television film, The House (1984).

His love of music is apparent in his feature film debut, Stormy Monday (1988), set among the jazz clubs of his native Newcastle. The film has a strong sense of place and evokes the clichés of film noir with considerable visual panache, but is let down by a forgettable storyline and lack of emotional depth. The film was a decent success and took him to Hollywood where he made two further stylish thrillers, the slickly efficient Internal Affairs (1990) and the rather more cerebral, dream-like Liebestraum (1991).