November 20, 2014

Famed stage and film director Mike Nichols died yesterday in New York City of cardiac arrest. He was 83. The German-born director won an Academy Award in 1967 for his second film, The Graduate, which made the lead, Dustin Hoffman, a star. Nichols was also nominated for Academy Awards for direction for his work on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Silkwood (1983), and Working Girl (1988). He was one of a small group of artists who have won all four major U.S. entertainment awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. He won Emmy Awards for his direction of  “Wit” (2001) and a 2003 television production of the massive play Angels in America. In 2012, Nichols won the Tony Award for best direction of a play for a critically acclaimed revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield.

Mike Nichols (© Bryan Bedder, Getty Images/Thinkstock)

Nichols was born in 1931 in Berlin. His original name was Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky. Through his mother, he was distantly related to physicist Albert Einstein. Nichols’s family immigrated to the United States in 1939. While attending the University of Chicago in the 1950′s, Nichols met Elaine May, and they began doing improvisational comedy routines. Both were members of the Compass Players, which was the predecessor to Chicago’s Second City troupe. In 1960, the pair opened on Broadway in An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May. They also made three best-selling records, one of which won the Grammy for best comedy album in 1962.

Switching to directing, Nichols made his Broadway debut in 1964 with Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in The Park, which featured the then relatively unknown actor Robert Redford. The show was a hit and earned Nichols his first Tony award. His first film directorial project was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the height of their fame. His last Oscar nomination was for producing The Remains of the Day, which was nominated for best picture in 1993.

Nichols is survived by his wife, the former ABC anchor Diane Sawyer, and three children from previous marriages.

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