As a child, he was a refugee from Nazi Germany. By age 12, he had been certified as a genius. In his late twenties, he was half of a popular comedy act. By his late thirties, he was an acclaimed and award-winning director of stage and screen. As the 20th Century gave way to the 21st, Mike Nichols was celebrated as a show business legend who still had some of his best work before him.
Born in Berlin in 1931, Nichols (born as Michael Igor Peschowsky) emigrated with his brother Robert to the USA in 1939. Sent to live with his doctor father, he and his sibling were soon placed with an English-speaking family and it wasn't until his mother arrived in NYC in 1941 that the family was reunited, despite his parents' stormy marriage. The untimely death of his father from leukemia the following year meant the family slipped into poverty. From an early age -- when he had a bad reaction to a defective vaccination for whooping cough and was left permanently hairless -- Nichols felt "different". Since he barely spoke English when he arrived in the USA, matters were further complicated. Despite being certified as a genius, he proved a lackluster student and drifted until 1948 when he attended the second performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and felt he had found his metier.
Decamping to the University of Chicago, he finally enjoyed the feeling of fitting in. Among the many in whose circle he moved were intellectuals like Susan Sontag and Heyward Ehrlich and theatrical types including Edward Asner, Severn Darden, Barbara Harris, Zohra Lampert and Eugene Troobnick. By his sophomore year, Nichols was directing and acting in plays when he was introduced to a woman who would change his life -- Elaine May.
Although they had been introduced, Nichols and May did not begin their partnership in earnest until 1955 after he had dropped out of college and briefly studied Method acting with Lee Strasberg. He joined the relatively new Compass Players in Chicago, an improvisatory troupe among whose founders were Paul Sills and Elaine May. Although she was comfortable performing with others in the group, Nichols only managed to be funny when he was partnered with her. The duo shared that ineffable thing called "chemistry" and onstage they continued to challenge one another and enjoyed displaying not only their verbal wit but also their intellects. Over the next several years, until the pair underwent a bitter break up in the early 1960s, Nichols and May enjoyed success as the premiere comedy duo of the time. The culmination of the pair's collaboration was the Broadway production "An Evening with Nichols and May" (1960) which led to a Grammy-winning recording. The strain of performing together, though, began to take its toll and when in 1962, the play "A Matter of Position" which she wrote and directed and in which he starred failed in Philadelphia, so did their partnership and friendship.
Feeling abandoned and without moorings, Nichols was unsure what to do next. When he was offered a chance to stage the Broadway-bound Neil Simon play "Nobody Loves Me" (later retitled "Barefoot in the Park"), he accepted. With a cast including Elizabeth Ashley, Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick and Kurt Kaznar, the light romantic comedy became a hit. Nichols earned the first of his (to date) six Tony Awards and marked the beginning of a long collaboration between playwright and director. The next year, they perhaps reached the apotheosis of their working relationship with "The Odd Couple", but also included "Plaza Suite" (1967), "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" (1968) and the short-lived "Fools" (1981). Except for the latter, Nichols earned a Tony for each of the others as well as for his staging of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" in 1984.
Having honed his craft on stage, Nichols moved to the big screen when screen goddess Elizabeth Taylor handpicked him to direct the film adaptation of Edward Albee's blistering portrait of a marriage, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966). Although he clashed with studio head Jack Warner (who wanted it made it color), Nichols shot the film in stark black and white and occasionally used handheld shots to intensify the dramatic tension. Because the movie tackled difficult subjects including adultery and alcoholism, Warner was concerned that the Catholic League of Decency would condemn it, but the director wasn't above using some pressure courtesy of his friendship with former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to obtain the League's blessing. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" became a box-office and critical success and went on to earn a near record 13 Academy Award nominations, including those for each of the four actors as well as for Best Director.
While Nichols lost the Oscar on his first bid, he captured the statue with his sophomore film, "The Graduate" (1967), which spoke to the members of a disaffected generation by giving life to otherwise inchoate feelings of alienation and frustration. With Dustin Hoffman in the lead ably supported by Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross as the women in his life and a score by Paul Simon, "The Graduate" became one of the seminal films of the 60s and, along with "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and "Easy Rider" (1969), ushered in a cycle of youth-oriented motion pictures that rejuvenated a moribund American film industry hurt by the splintering of the studio system.
Now at a place in his career where he could do almost anything, Nichols opted to adapt Joseph Heller's complex cult novel "Catch-22". The overly-detailed 1970 feature, however, has to be ranked as a noble failure. Critics felt that Nichols' somewhat sentimentalization of the darkly comic absurdity found in the book undermined the film. While it was beautifully shot (by cinematographer David Watkin) and well acted, "Catch-22" kept the audience at bay with a cerebral remoteness. Nichols obviously was taking a risk, but it was that didn't work.
A similar fate befell his next effort, "Carnal Knowledge" (1971), a trenchant exploration of sexual politics that solidified Jack Nicholson's star status, proved Candice Bergen was more than a pretty face and renewed the sagging acting career of Ann-Margret. It didn't help his film career that his next two project, the George C Scott vehicle "The Day of the Dolphin" (1973) and the period comedy "The Fortune" (1975), with Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Stockard Channing, didn't exactly impress audiences or critics. Indeed, two weeks into shooting "Bogart Slept Here" from a Neil Simon script in 1975, Nichols pulled the plug on the project and left Hollywood for nearly a decade. (Although he did spend some of the period attempting to jump-start a film version of "A Chorus Line".)
He first turned his attentions to the small screen, serving as an executive producer on the acclaimed, award-winning drama "Family" (ABC, 1976-80) and then returned to Broadway directing Trevor Griffiths' play "Comedians" (1976) and serving as one of the producers of the Tony-winning hit musical "Annie" (1977). He enjoyed another stage success at the helm of "The Gin Game" (1977) but stumbled a bit with the comedies "Lunch Hour" (1980) and the aforementioned "Fools".
In 1983, Nichols returned to features with the biopic "Silkwood", that not only served as a commentary on the plight of women in a male-dominated culture, but also depicted how anyone could be dehumanized by a complex system, whether it be the government or big business. "Silkwood" not only restored Nichols to the ranks of top directors in Hollywood, it also refreshed the career of singer-actress Cher (who played a supporting role as a lesbian), catapulted Kurt Russell to the ranks of leading men and further demonstrated the seemingly endless talents of star Meryl Streep.
Reuniting with both Streep and Nicholson, he helmed "Heartburn" (1986), an adaptation of Nora Ephron's caustic roman-a-clef about her failed marriage, that once again explored the impact of sexual politics. His follow-up, 1988's "Working Girl" satirized the same idea within a corporate setting. His adaptation of Carrie Fisher's semi-autobiographical "Postcards From the Edge" (1990) also looked at how women coped in business, but this time the industry examined was movie making. Although it garnered respectful reviews, the bloom was beginning to fade on his career.
In the early 90s, Nichols suffered box-office disappointments with "Regarding Henry" (1991) and "Wolf" (1994), despite high profile leads Harrison Ford and Jack Nicholson, respectively. The former was a somewhat sappy look at a venal corporate lawyer whose life is changed after a shooting, while the latter was a metaphoric character study of the male libido embodied by a man literally turning into a beast. In his first overt reteaming with Elaine May (she reportedly has worked as a script doctor on each of his films since they reconciled in the 1970s), Nichols enjoyed a hit with "The Birdcage" (1996), an Americanized remake of the popular French farce "La Cage aux folles". While some gay and lesbian groups were not particularly pleased by what were thought to be stereotypical depictions of homosexual characters, the movie allowed Robin Williams and Nathan Lane to cut loose and give larger-than-life portrayals as a long-standing couple whose lives are upturned when Williams' son visits with his conservative fiancee and her family.
Instead of capitalizing on this success, though, Nichols made the daring decision to return to stage acting in the 1996 London production of Wallace Shawn's play "The Designated Mourner" which was preserved on film and released theatrically the following year. Somewhat static and talky, the movie at least allows audiences a rare opportunity to see Nichols tackle a dramatic role. When he did resume his directorial career, it was with the feature adaptation of the controversial political roman-a-clef "Primary Colors" (1998). Original choice Tom Hanks passed on the project in part over concerns on how the lead character -- a presidential candidate closely modeled on Bill Clinton -- was depicted. John Travolta, though, had no qualms and accepted the role. While the movie was accomplished, it suffered from a case of poor timing. Released when the American presidency was in crisis over the Chief Executive's sexual liaison with a White House intern, "Primary Colors" had the feeling of being yesterday's news. Elaine May's script was sharp but overshadowed by the unfolding history and Nichols' direction seemed curiously muted and uneven. "What Planet Are You From?" (2000), an unfunny comedy about an alien who arrives to find a willing female to bear his spawn, was even more of a disappointment and quickly was relegated to cable outlets and video store shelves. Nichols roared back, though, by collaborating with "Primary Colors" lead Emma Thompson on a small screen adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning drama "Wit" (HBO, 2001). Focusing on an uptight, sardonic professor who contracts terminal cancer, the film version was a brilliantly acted ensemble piece, anchored by Thompson's luminous performance. Nichols served as co-executive producer, co-author of the teleplay (with Thompson) and director and earned Emmy Awards for his direction and as producer of the Outstanding Made for Television Movie. A remarkable achievement for any medium, "Wit" demonstrated that when given the right material, Nichols could still rise to the occasion. Anticipation ran high for his next project, the six-part HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's charged epic "Angels in America" (lensed 2002). With a stellar cast led by Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson, the film was among the most highly praised TV presentations of the year, and Nichols was rewarded with two Emmys, a director for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special and as producer for Outstanding Miniseries, as well as a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television (in the same year he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the DGA). Nichols returned to feature films equally strong when he directed the highly literate, often romantically brutal battle of the sexes "Closer" (2004), a tense, charged throwback to his earlier films "Carnal Knowledge" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" based on Patrick Marber's play about a pair of couples (Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen) who become messily intertwined with one another. Although the film garnered mixed reviews, many of them were raves, and Nichols' was praised for a strong return to form.
Away from the screen, Nichols proved that he remained a potent force in the world of legitimate theater as well, winning his sixth Tony award as Best Director in 2005 for helming the enormously popular and critically hailed original Broadway production of "Spamalot," culled from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."