Mike Nichols (Michael Peschkowsky) - biography

Mike Nichols (born November 6, 1931) is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer. Nichols is one of only twelve people to have won an all the major American entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. In 2001, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He received the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2010.

1 Early years
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Work
5 Stage productions

Early years

Nichols was born Michael Igorevitch Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte Landauer and Igor Nicholaievitch Peschkowsky, a physician. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. He and his German/Russian Jewish family moved to the United States to flee the Nazis in 1939. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944 and attended PS 87 in Manhattan. While attending the University of Chicago in the 1950s, he began work in improvisational comedy with the Compass Players, a precursor to The Second City, and later started the long-running Midnight Special folk music program on radio station WFMT.

Career

Nichols formed a comedy team with Del Close and Elaine May, with whom he appeared in nightclubs, on radio, released best-selling records, made guest appearances on several television programs and had their own show on Broadway, directed by Arthur Penn. They were accompanied by Chicago pianist Marty Rubenstein, host of the television show Marty's Place. Personal idiosyncrasies and tensions (the latter culminating in the out-of-town closing of A Matter of Position, a play written by May and starring Nichols) eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in 1961. They later reconciled and worked together many times, with May scripting his films The Birdcage and Primary Colors. They appeared together at President Jimmy Carter's inaugural gala and in a 1980 New Haven stage revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Swoosie Kurtz and James Naughton.

Nichols was chosen to direct Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park in 1963. He realized almost at once that directing was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Nichols's production of Simon's play was a blockbuster hit, running for 1530 performances. He went on to direct (and occasionally produce) many other Broadway hits, including several more by Simon. He has won numerous theatre awards, including the Tony Award for Best Direction for seven different productions.

Nichols' career as a film director began with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 for which he received an Oscar nomination, and The Graduate--the biggest hit film released in 1967—for which he won the Best Director Oscar. He's also won Emmy Awards for his direction of Wit (2001) and Angels in America (2003).

Nichols is a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He's also a co-founder of The New Actors Workshop in New York City, where he occasionally teaches.

Nichols went on with making movies, many of them would deal with people and the faulty, confused world they live in. In the films The Graduate and Working Girl, he talked about those individuals who want to turn their lives around for the better. Another theme in Nichols' films is the faults in people that lead them to live imperfect lives: he would make this the subject of his dramatic films and his comedies.

Nichols' other films include The Fortune, Wolf, Silkwood, Regarding Henry, Catch 22, Working Girl, Closer, and the true story film, Charlie Wilson's War. Of the movie stars he worked with, Nichols would do three films with Meryl Streep, two films with Julia Roberts, and four films with three time Academy Award Winner Jack Nicholson. Two films that Nichols and Nicholson did were Wolf and Carnal Knowledge. He would also direct a remake, The Birdcage, which remade the French film La Cage aux Folles.

Personal life

Nichols has been married four times. His first wife was Patricia Scott; they were married from 1957 to 1960. He was married to Margo Callas from 1963 to 1974, producing a daughter, Daisy Nichols. His third marriage, to Annabel Davis-Goff, produced two children, Max Nichols and Jenny Nichols. They were divorced in 1986. He married ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer, on April 29, 1988.

According to research done by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University, in 2010 for the PBS series Faces of America, Nichols' grandfather was a leading theorist on anarchism in the early 20th century and Nichols is related to Albert Einstein who was a cousin on his mother’s side. He is also distantly related to actress Meryl Streep with whom he has worked on several projects.

Among Nichols' personal pursuits is a lifelong interest in Arabian horses. From 1968 until 2004 he owned a farm in Connecticut and was a noted horse breeder. Over the years, he also imported quality Arabian horses from Poland, some of whom later resold for record-setting prices, and in doing so helped raise the image of the breed.