Mike Nichols
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Mike Nichols (born November 6 1931) is an Academy Award winning American film director, writer, and producer.
Born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, 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. 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.
Nichols formed a comedy team with Elaine May, with whom he appeared in nightclubs, on radio, released best-selling records, guested 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 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 has been married four times, most notablyTemplate:Fact to TV journalist Diane Sawyer, whom he wed on April 29 1988. He has three children, Daisy (born circa 1964), Max (born 1974) and Jenny (born 1977). His daughter-in-law is ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols.
Nichols is a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He also is a founder of The New Actor's Workshop in New York City, where he occasionally teaches.
