Mike Figgis (born February 28, 1948) is an English film director, screenwriter, composer, and musician whose work moves between mainstream cinema, experimental filmmaking, documentary, theater, and digital video. His films often combine psychological intensity with formal experimentation, and he has frequently written or composed music for his own productions.
Born in Carlisle, Cumberland, Figgis spent part of his childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, before his family moved to Newcastle upon Tyne. He studied music in London and began his professional life as a multi-instrumentalist. During the 1960s, he played trumpet, guitar, and keyboards with several groups, including the R&B band The Gas Board, which featured Bryan Ferry. He also joined the People Band, an experimental music ensemble whose record was produced by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts.
The People Band developed into the avant-garde theater company People Show, with which Figgis worked as a musician and performer during the 1970s. This period established many of the interests that later shaped his filmmaking: live performance, improvisation, music, projected images, and the relationship between theatrical space and the camera. In 1980, he left People Show and formed the Mike Figgis Group, creating multimedia stage works that incorporated film. Productions such as Redhugh, Slow Fade, and Animals of the City attracted attention for their combination of live action, music, and moving images.
Channel 4 financed Figgis' first major screen project, The House, a television film made in 1984. His feature debut, Stormy Monday (1988), was a moody neo-noir set in Newcastle's jazz-club world. Figgis wrote and directed the film and also composed its score. The cast included Sting, Melanie Griffith, and Tommy Lee Jones, while the film's atmosphere reflected Figgis' background in music and experimental theater.
His first American production was Internal Affairs (1990), a crime thriller starring Richard Gere and Andy Garcia. Figgis followed it with Liebestraum (1991), a romantic drama that allowed him to work again as writer, director, and composer. Other projects of the early 1990s included Mr. Jones and The Browning Version, an adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play.
Figgis reached the height of his international reputation with Leaving Las Vegas (1995). Based on John O'Brien's novel, the film follows an alcoholic screenwriter who travels to Las Vegas intending to drink himself to death. Figgis wrote, directed, and scored the film, which earned Academy Award nominations for both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.
After the less successful One Night Stand, Figgis pursued increasingly personal and unconventional projects. The Loss of Sexual Innocence blended autobiographical elements with a fragmented narrative, while Miss Julie adapted August Strindberg's play through spare staging and handheld cinematography. His most notable formal experiment was Timecode (2000), which used four digital cameras filming simultaneously in a single continuous take. The action appears in four panels on screen, creating a constantly shifting view of intersecting lives in the Los Angeles film industry.
Figgis continued to work in television, documentary, and independent cinema, directing projects such as The Battle of Orgreave, The Blues episode Red, White and Blues, Hotel, Cold Creek Manor, and Suspension of Disbelief. His later documentaries include Somebody Up There Likes Me (2019), about musician Ronnie Wood, and Megadoc (2025), concerning the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. He has also taught film studies and advocated lightweight digital production, including the development of the compact camera support known as the Fig Rig.