Most days, Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste are divided by an ocean. The 81-year-old director has a home in Cornwall, while the 57-year-old actor moved to Los Angeles more than two decades ago in frustration at the dearth of roles available to her in the UK. This was even after she had been Oscar-nominated for Leigh’s 1996 masterpiece Secrets & Lies, in which she played an optometrist tracking down her biological mother.
Drinking tea today in a London hotel room, with Jean-Baptiste wearing circular black designer frames and Leigh resembling an off-duty farmer in his blue gilet, it is only a table that divides them. As they chat, one of them will occasionally reach across the gap in affection or solidarity. They can’t quite touch – their chairs are a shade too far apart – but the gesture is as fond as a squeeze of the hand.
