Born in Carlisle, England and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Figgis’ family
relocated to Newcastle, England when he was eight. As a teenager he
helped form an R&B band called the Gas Board, featuring future
Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry. He studied music in London, and went
on to work with an experimental theatre troupe known as The People
Show. After leaving The People Show in 1980 he formed his own theatre
company; The Mike Figgis Group. After being turned down by the National
Film School, Figgis caught the eye of Channel Four, who financed his
60-minute TV movie, The House (1984). Figgis made his feature directorial
and screenwriting debut with Stormy
Monday (1988). A moody character study set against the backdrop
of the Newcastle's jazz scene and the underworld, it boasted an impressive
cast including Melanie Griffith, Tommy Lee Jones and Sting.
He earned probably his greatest recognition thus for his successful
direction of Richard Gere and Andy Garcia in the police corruption thriller
Internal Affairs (1990). The convoluted thriller Liebestraum (1991),
did not fare so well at the box-office. He then went on to direct Richard
Gere and Lena Olin in the disappointing Mr Jones (1993), the film was
another commercial flop and Figgis complained of studio interference.
Further commercial failure followed with a remake of Terence Rattigan's
play The Browning Version (1994), starring Albert
Finney and Greta Scacchi, the film lacked the charm of Anthony
Asquith’s 1950 version. He achieved widespread critical acclaim
and box-office success for Leaving Las Vegas (1995), starring Nicolas
Cage and Elisabeth Shue; the film was an unsentimental portrait of an
alcoholic screenwriter’s relationship with an abused prostitute.
Figgis followed up this success two years later with One Night Stand
(1997); a weak drama centring on the repercussions of adultery, it was
a box-office and critical failure. Figgis returned in 1999, releasing
the experimental The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1999), a story revolving
around a young man's sexual evolution, and continued experimenting with
different cinema forms with Miss Julie (1999), an adaptation of August
Strindberg's play about an illicit love affair between a Count's daughter
and her servant. Figgis' most audacious and ambitious project to date
was Time Code (2000), shot in a single day without a script and using
four digital cameras, the split-screen psychological thriller received
mixed reviews amid criticism of style over substance.
