The veteran British director Richard Eyre has said it is “very hard” to get small-budget independent dramas made any more because studio bosses are obsessed with “bankable” celebrity names.

Eyre, who has worked across film, theatre, TV and opera, winning five Olivier awards and a Bafta, also spoke of the importance of making drama that embraces social realism – especially in an era when the industry is increasingly reliant on superhero films and franchises to attract audiences.

“Culture should reflect our lives,” Eyre, 81, told the Guardian. “At the heart of all art is the opportunity to see through other people’s eyes. The most difficult invocation is to love thy neighbour as thyself, but it should be the cornerstone of every society. And drama helps us do that because it helps us understand each other.”

Eyre, whose films include Iris (2001) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), and whose extensive career is being celebrated in a new season at the British Film Institute (BFI) in December, said the creative industry was going after “a safe bet” these days.

“It’s very hard to get small-budget independent films on any subject made,” he said. “So often, the sales agent will say: ‘Well who’s in it?’ It’s become about who is bankable, and it changes from day to day. Suddenly some star emerges and overnight you have to get them to get your film made.”

In the old days, he added, “the people in charge employed you because you had certain skills, including deciding who was the best actor for the part. Nobody said: ‘You’ve got to get X person’, whereas now it’s all sort of like old-fashioned Hollywood.”

Even the subsidised theatre sector had fallen victim to this, he said. “It’s exasperating, because when you do a piece of work that really has got value and force, it finds an audience regardless of who’s in it. But the difficulty is getting someone to underwrite and trust you.”

The BFI celebration includes a conversation event with Eyre, and film introductions from his frequent collaborators Judi Dench and Jonathan Pryce. Titles playing include Play for Today: Just a Boys’ Game (1979), Stage Beauty (2004) and The Dresser (2015).

Eyre reminisced about what he called “the golden age of socially conscious TV” which included “hugely influential” shows such as Boys from the Blackstuff.

“This hasn’t entirely vanished today. Shows like Happy Valley and Sherwood are absolutely supreme. Although they’re procedurals, they’re so involved in talking about the society in which they’re set and the relationships within them. The performances are brilliant – Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley is just magnificent.”

Eyre paid tribute to the actors he has worked with, crediting them with the success of his films and shows. Alongside Dench and Pryce, they include Cate Blanchett, the late Maggie Smith, and Colin Firth, whose first big role was in Eyre’s 1988 BBC Falklands drama, Tumbledown.

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“It’s invariably the performances that make a good film or series. The human element is what draws you to something. If you think of the great series, like Sopranos and Breaking Bad, you identify with the leading characters,” he said.

“I’m not an auteur film-maker, actors are the medium through which I work. I both like and admire them. If they’re good, they’re invariably bright. Maggie Smith was one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met, and also one of the best read. She was very articulate and devastatingly witty.”

Eyre started his career as the associate director of the Royal Lyceum theatre before becoming the artistic director of the National Theatre from 1987 to 1999.

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On television he has directed episodes of Play for Today, The Cherry Orchard, and King Lear – an adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins that garnered huge critical acclaim. He made his directorial film debut with The Ploughman’s Lunch, in 1983, while his last film, Allelujah, about a geriatric ward of an NHS hospital threatened with closure, was released in 2022.

Allelujah was made when the industry was suffering from the effects of the pandemic, from which Eyre said it was “still recovering”. “So many projects piled up in Hollywood, and a lot of them are being cancelled because somehow the moment seems to have passed.”

The director is raising funds for his next feature, The Housekeeper. Written by the bestselling author Rose Tremain, it’s a romance fictionalising the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, starring Hopkins, Uma Thurman and Phoebe Dynevor. “It’s a wonderful matrix of relationships,” he said.

Personal relationships are a theme to which Eyre has consistently returned. “My favourite play is King Lear [Eyre also directed the National’s landmark 1997 production] because I’m fascinated by the dynamics of the family relationships. I guess it’s because my family didn’t knit together. For me, working in the theatre or working on film is always finding a surrogate family.”

The Devon-born director said he was “quite surprised, extremely excited and very flattered” by the BFI season.

“I’ve never thought I have a career, because I’ve never been strategic about it,” he said. I’ve never said: ‘Oh, I’m going to do that and then I’ll ascend to running the National Theatre, or make a movie for an American studio.’ I wouldn’t say it’s all been accident, but it’s one piece of work and then another. It’s just wonderful to be paid for stuff you enjoy.”

• Richard Eyre: Weapons of Understanding is at BFI Southbank from 1-29 December, including Sir Richard Eyre in Conversation on 8 December.