Mike Nichols

Director

Mike Nichols was born in Berlin on November 6th, 1931 and is the Director. At the age of 83, Mike Nichols biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

  Report
Date of Birth
November 6, 1931
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
Berlin
Death Date
Nov 20, 2014 (age 83)
Zodiac Sign
Scorpio
Networth
$100 Million
Profession
Actor, Film Actor, Film Director, Film Producer, Screenwriter, Theater Director
Mike Nichols Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 83 years old, Mike Nichols physical status not available right now. We will update Mike Nichols's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Height
Not Available
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Not Available
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Not Available
Measurements
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Mike Nichols Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
University of Chicago
Mike Nichols Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Patricia Scot, ​ ​(m. 1957; div. 1960)​, Margot Callas, ​ ​(m. 1963; div. 1974)​, Annabel Davis-Goff, ​ ​(m. 1975; div. 1986)​, Diane Sawyer ​(m. 1988)​
Children
3
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
Not Available
Siblings
Rachel Nichols (daughter-in-law)
Mike Nichols Career

Nichols first saw Elaine May when she was sitting in the front row while he was playing the lead in a Chicago production of Miss Julie, and they made eye contact. : 39  Weeks later he ran into her in a train station where he started a conversation in an assumed accent, pretending to be a spy, and she played along, using another accent. : 325  They hit it off immediately, which led to a brief romance. Later in his career, he said "Elaine was very important to me from the moment I saw her.": 325

In 1953, Nichols left Chicago for New York City to study method acting under Lee Strasberg, but was unable to find stage work there. He was invited back to join Chicago's Compass Players in 1955, the predecessor to Chicago's Second City, whose members included May, Shelley Berman, Del Close, and Nancy Ponder, directed by Paul Sills. In Chicago, he started doing improvisational routines with May, which eventually led to the formation of the comedy duo Nichols and May in 1958, first performing in New York City.

They performed live satirical comedy acts and eventually released three records of their routines, which became best-sellers. They also appeared in nightclubs and were on radio and television. Jack Rollins, who later became Woody Allen's manager and producer, invited them to audition and was most impressed: "Their work was so startling, so new, as fresh as could be. I was stunned by how really good they were, actually as impressed by their acting technique as by their comedy ... I thought, My God, these are two people writing hilarious comedy on their feet!": 340

In 1960, Nichols and May opened the Broadway show An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, directed by Arthur Penn. The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Personal idiosyncrasies and tensions, such as on the unsuccessful A Matter of Position, a play written by May and starring Nichols, eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in 1961. About their sudden breakup, director Arthur Penn said, "They set the standard and then they had to move on,": 351  while talk show host Dick Cavett said "they were one of the comic meteors in the sky.": 348  Comedy historian Gerald Nachman describes the effect of their break-up on American comedy:

They later reconciled and worked together many times. They appeared together at President Jimmy Carter's inaugural gala, in 1977, and in a 1980 New Haven stage revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Swoosie Kurtz and James Naughton. May scripted Nichols's films The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998). In 2010, at the AFI's "Life Achievement Award" ceremony, May gave a humor-filled tribute to Nichols.

Career as a director

Pre-film stage career

After the professional split with May, Nichols went to Vancouver, British Columbia, to work in the theater directing a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and acted in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan.

In 1963, Nichols was chosen to direct Neil Simon's play Barefoot in the Park. He realized at once that he was meant to be a director, saying in a 2003 interview: "On the first day of rehearsal, I thought, 'Well, look at this. Here is what I was meant to do.' I knew instantly that I was home". Barefoot in the Park was a big hit, running for 1530 performances and earning Nichols a Tony Award for his direction.

This began a series of highly successful plays on Broadway (often from works by Simon) that would establish his reputation. After directing an off-Broadway production of Ann Jellicoe's The Knack, Nichols directed Murray Schisgal's play Luv in 1964. Again the show was a hit and Nichols won a Tony Award (shared with The Odd Couple). In 1965 he directed another play by Neil Simon, The Odd Couple. The original production starred Art Carney as Felix Ungar and Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison. The play ran for 966 performances and won Tony Awards for Nichols, Simon and Matthau. Overall, Nichols won nine Tony Awards: including six for Best Director of either a play or a musical, one for Best Play, and one for Best Musical.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In 1966, Nichols was a star stage director and Time magazine called him "the most in-demand director in the American theatre." Although he had no experience in filmmaking, after befriending Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Warner Bros. invited Nichols to direct a screen adaptation of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis for which he received a fee of $400,000. The film was critically acclaimed, with critics calling Nichols "the new Orson Welles", and a financial success, the number 1 film of 1966.

The film was considered groundbreaking for having a level of profanity and sexual innuendo unheard of at that time. It won five Academy Awards and garnered thirteen nominations (including Nichols's first nomination for Best Director), earning the distinctions of being one of only two films nominated in every eligible category at the Oscars (the other being Cimarron), and the first film to have its entire credited cast nominated for acting Oscars. It also won three BAFTA Awards and was later ranked No. 67 in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).

The Graduate

His next film was The Graduate (1967), starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross for which he was paid $150,000, a deal he had made four years earlier with producer Joseph E. Levine. It became the highest-grossing film of 1967 and one of the highest-grossing films in history up to that date, with Nichols receiving 16⅔% of the profits, making him a millionaire. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with Nichols winning as Best Director. In 2007, it was ranked #17 in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).

However, getting the film made was difficult for Nichols, who, while noted for being a successful Broadway director, was still an unknown in Hollywood. Producer Lawrence Turman, who wanted only Nichols to direct it, was continually turned down for financing. He then contacted Levine, who said he would finance the film because he had associated with Nichols on The Knack, and because he heard that Elizabeth Taylor specifically wanted Nichols to direct her and Richard Burton in Virginia Woolf. With financing assured, Nichols suggested Buck Henry for screenwriter, although Henry's experience had also been mostly in improvised comedy, and had no writing background. Nichols said to Henry, "I think you could do it; I think you should do it."

Nichols also took a chance on using Dustin Hoffman, who had no film experience, for the lead, when others had suggested using known star Robert Redford. Hoffman credits Nichols for having taken a great risk in giving him, a relative unknown, the starring role: "I don't know of another instance of a director at the height of his powers who would take a chance and cast someone like me in that part. It took tremendous courage."

The quality of the cinematography was also influenced by Nichols, who chose Oscar winner Robert Surtees to do the photography. Surtees, who had photographed major films since the 1920s, including Ben-Hur, said later, "It took everything I had learned over 30 years to be able to do the job. I knew that Mike Nichols was a young director who went in for a lot of camera. We did more things in this picture than I ever did in one film."

Nichols also chose the music by Simon and Garfunkel. When Paul Simon was taking too long to write new songs for the film, he used existing songs, originally planning to replace them with newly written ones. In the end only one new song was available, and Nichols used the existing previously released songs. At one point, when Nichols heard Paul Simon's song, "Mrs. Roosevelt", he suggested to Simon that he change it to "Mrs. Robinson". The song won a Grammy after the film was released and became America's number 1 pop song. Nichols selected all the numerous songs for the film and chose which scenes they would be used in. The placement and selection of songs would affect the way audiences understood the film. Even actor William Daniels, who played Hoffman's father, remembers that after first hearing the songs, especially "The Sound of Silence", he thought, "Oh, wait a minute. That changed the whole idea of the picture for me," suddenly realizing the film would not be a typical comedy.

Nichols had previously returned to Broadway to direct The Apple Tree, starring Second City alumna, Barbara Harris. After doing The Graduate, he again returned to the Broadway stage with a revival of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in 1967, which ran for 100 performances. He then directed Neil Simon's Plaza Suite in 1968, earning him another Tony Award for Best Director. He also directed the short film Teach Me! (1968), which starred actress Sandy Dennis.

In 1969 his film production company, Friwaftt, was acquired by Avco Embassy, the distributor of The Graduate, who also appointed him to the board of directors. Friwaftt stood for "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Nichols's next film was a big-budget adaptation of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 (1970), followed by Carnal Knowledge (1971) starring Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret, Art Garfunkel and Candice Bergen. The latter film was highly controversial upon release because of the casual and blunt depiction of sexual intercourse. In Georgia, a theatre manager was convicted in 1972 of violating the state's obscenity statutes by showing the film, a conviction later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Jenkins v. Georgia.

Nichols returned to Broadway to direct Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1971. The play won Nichols another Tony Award for Best Director. In 1973, Nichols directed a revival of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya on Broadway starring George C. Scott and with a new translation by himself and Albert Todd. In 1973 Nichols directed the film The Day of the Dolphin starring George C. Scott, based on the French novel Un animal doué de raison (lit. A Sentient Animal) by Robert Merle and adapted by Buck Henry. The film was not successful financially and received mixed reviews from critics.

Nichols next directed The Fortune (1975), starring Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Stockard Channing. Again, the film was a financial failure and received mostly negative reviews. In 1975, Nichols began filming Bogart Slept Here, an original screenplay by Neil Simon. The film starred Robert De Niro and Simon's wife, Marsha Mason. After one week of filming, displeased with the results, Nichols and the studio fired De Niro and shut the production down. Simon would retool the script two years later as The Goodbye Girl. Nichols would not direct another narrative feature film for eight years.

Nichols returned to the stage with two moderately successful productions in 1976; David Rabe's Streamers opened in April and ran for 478 performances. Trevor Griffiths's Comedians ran for 145 performances. In 1976 Nichols also worked as Executive Producer to create the television drama Family for ABC. The series ran until 1980.

In 1977, Nichols produced the original Broadway production of the hugely successful musical Annie, which ran for 2,377 performances until 1983. Nichols won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Later in 1977, Nichols directed D.L. Coburn's The Gin Game. The play ran for 517 performances and won a Tony Award for Best Actress for Jessica Tandy.

In 1980, Nichols directed the documentary Gilda Live, a filmed performance of comedian Gilda Radner's one-woman show Gilda Radner Live on Broadway. It was released at the same time as the album of the show, both of which were successful. Nichols was then involved with two unsuccessful shows: he produced Billy Bishop Goes to War, which opened in 1980 and closed after only twelve performances, and directed Neil Simon's Fools, in 1981, which closed after forty performances.

Returning to Hollywood, Nichols's career rebounded in 1983 with the film Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell, based on the life of whistleblower Karen Silkwood. The film was a financial and critical success, with film critic Vincent Canby calling it "the most serious work Mike Nichols has yet done." The film received five Academy Award nominations, including a Best Director nomination for Nichols.

That same year, Nichols and Peter Stone helped to fix up and rewrite the musical My One and Only just days before its Boston premiere. The show eventually went to Broadway and ran for 767 performances, winning Tony Awards for Best Actor, Best Choreography (both for Tommy Tune) and Best Supporting Actor (Charles "Honi" Coles).

In 1984, Nichols directed the Broadway premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote that "The Broadway version of The Real Thing—a substantial revision of the original London production—is not only Mr. Stoppard's most moving play, but also the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years." The play was nominated for seven Tony Awards and won five, including a Best Director Tony for Nichols.

Nichols followed the success with the Broadway premiere of David Rabe's Hurlyburly, also in 1984. It was performed just two blocks away from the theater showing The Real Thing. It was nominated for three Tony Awards and won Best Actress for Judith Ivey.

In 1983, Nichols had seen comedian Whoopi Goldberg's one woman show, The Spook Show, at Dance Theater Workshop and wanted to help her expand it. Goldberg's self-titled Broadway show opened in October 1984 and ran for 156 performances. Rosie O'Donnell later said that Nichols had discovered Goldberg while she was struggling as a downtown artist: "He gave her the entire beginning of her career and recognized her brilliance before anyone else." In 1986 Nichols directed the Broadway premiere of Andrew Bergman's Social Security and in 1988 directed Waiting for Godot, starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin. Williams cited Nichols and May as among his early influences for performing intelligent comedy.

In 1986, Nichols directed the film Heartburn, which received mixed reviews, and starred Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. In 1988, Nichols completed two feature films. The first was an adaptation of Neil Simon's autobiographical stage play Biloxi Blues starring Matthew Broderick, also receiving mixed critical reviews. Nichols directed one of his most successful films, Working Girl, which starred Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. The film was a huge hit upon its release. It also received mostly positive reviews from critics with an 84% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 73 metascore at Metacritic. It was nominated for six Academy Awards (including Best Director for Nichols) and won the Academy Award for Best Song for Carly Simon's "Let the River Run".

At one point in the 1980s, Nichols—who was prone to bouts of depression—reported that he had considered suicide, a feeling apparently brought on by a psychotic episode he experienced after taking the drug Halcion.

In the 1990s, Nichols directed several more successful, well-received films including Postcards from the Edge (1990) starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine; Primary Colors (1998) starring John Travolta and Emma Thompson; and The Birdcage (1996), an American remake of the 1978 French film La Cage aux Folles starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest. Both The Birdcage and Primary Colors were written by Elaine May, Nichols's comedy partner earlier in his career. Other films directed by Nichols include Regarding Henry (1991) starring Harrison Ford and Wolf (1994) starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer. When he was honored by Lincoln Center in 1999 for his life's work, Elaine May—speaking once again as his friend—served up the essence of Nichols with the following:

In the 2000s, Nichols directed the films What Planet Are You From? (2000), Closer (2004) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007), a political drama that was ultimately his final feature film. What Planet Are You From? received mixed reviews from critics, while Closer and Charlie Wilson's War received generally positive reviews and were both nominated for Academy Awards, BAFTA and Golden Globe awards.

Nichols also directed widely acclaimed adaptations of Wit (2001) and Angels in America (2003) for television, winning Emmy Awards for both of them. For his direction of the Broadway musical Spamalot, he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2005.

In 2012, Nichols won the Best Direction of a Play Tony Award for a revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. In 2013, he directed Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz in a Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal. The play began previews of its limited run on October 1, 2013 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, opened on October 27, and closed on January 4, 2014.

Among projects that remained uncompleted when he died, in April 2013 it was announced that Nichols was in talks to direct a film adaptation of Jonathan Tropper's novel One Last Thing Before I Go. The film was to be produced by J. J. Abrams, who previously wrote the Nichols-directed film Regarding Henry (1991). In July 2014, it was announced that Nichols and Streep would reunite for an HBO film of Terrence McNally's 1985 play Master Class, with Nichols directing Streep in the starring role of opera singer Maria Callas.

Nichols was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He was also a co-founder of The New Actors Workshop in New York City, where he occasionally taught. In addition, he remained active in the Directors Guild of America, interviewing fellow film director Bennett Miller on stage in October 2011 after the Guild's screening of Miller's Moneyball.

In January 2016, PBS aired Mike Nichols: American Masters, an American Masters documentary about Nichols directed by his former improv partner, Elaine May. On February 22, 2016, HBO aired the documentary Becoming Mike Nichols.

Source

The 100 greatest classic films ever and where you can watch them right now: Veteran critic BRIAN VINER'S movies everyone should see at least once - and they don't include Marvel, Shawshank Redemption or Titanic

www.dailymail.co.uk, February 10, 2024
Here are 100 films that I believe every person should see at least once in their lifetime, and all of them should make you laugh, cry, gasp, or think. In some instances, perhaps all four are present. I hope my list would bring you some good cinematic treats, or better still, introduce you to them. Happy viewing!

Diane Sawyer sells Martha's Vineyard beachfront home for $24 million, 28 years after selling it for $5.3 million with late husband Mike Nichols

www.dailymail.co.uk, August 17, 2023
Diane Sawyer hopes to make a $19 million profit from her Martha's Vineyard farm, dubbed 'Chip Chop'. The actress, 77, has listed the 20-acre beachfront home, which includes several dwellings and two private stretches of beach, for $24 million. In July, Tragedy struck at the Obamas' house, Tafari Campbell, 45, died while paddle-boarding in Edgartown Great Pond.

After winning the EGOT Championship, Viola Davis has been named Officially a winner

www.popsugar.co.uk, February 6, 2023
Welcome to the EGOT club, Viola Davis! When she won the Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for her book "Finding Me," the "How to Get Away With Murder" actress became the 18th person to win an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony. Davis received an Emmy in 2015 for her role as Annalise Keating on "HTGAWM," an Oscar for her supporting work on "Fences" and two Tony Awards for "King Hedley II" in 2001 and "Fences" in 2010. Rita Moreno, John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mike Nichols, and Jennifer Hudson are among Rita Moreno's favorites.