Mike Nichols, a nine-time Tony Award winner on Broadway and the Oscar-winning director of influential films such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, and Carnal Knowledge, died on Wednesday aged 83.
The prolific director passed away at his home of cardiac arrest, his spokeswoman said. A private service for the family will be held this week, followed by a memorial at a future date.
No director had ever moved between Broadway and Hollywood as easily as Nichols, one of the few people to win the Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy awards.
Nichols, whose career first blossomed with a comedy partnership with Elaine May in the late 1950s, was married to Diane Sawyer, former anchorwoman of ABC's World News Tonight broadcast.
ABC News president James Goldston announced Nichols’ death in a memo to staff, saying he “passed away suddenly on Wednesday evening”.
“In a triumphant career that spanned over six decades, Mike created some of the most iconic works of American film, television and theater,” Goldston said. “He was a true visionary.”
In memory of Nichols, marquees on Broadway theatres in New York will be dimmed on Friday evening for one minute.
Fans and colleagues took to Twitter to express their sorrow.
“Funniest, smartest, most generous, wisest, kindest of all,” actress Mia Farrow tweeted. “Mike Nichols, a truly good man.” Actor Tony Goldwyn said Nichols was the greatest of the great. “What a gigantic loss!” he added.
Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, where his parents had settled after leaving Russia. He came to the United States aged seven when his family fled the Nazis in 1939. He grew up in New York feeling like an outsider because of his limited English and odd appearance – a reaction to a vaccine caused permanent hair loss. As a University of Chicago student, he fought depression, but found like-minded friends such as May.
Comedy
In the late 1950s, Nichols and May formed a stand-up team at the forefront of a comedy movement that included Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters and Woody Allen in satirising contemporary American life. In the mid-1960s, Nichols came to be a directing powerhouse on Broadway with
Barefoot in the Park
, the first of what would be a successful relationship with playwright Neil Simon. Later he would stage Simon’s
The Odd Couple,
Plaza Suite
and
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
.
Time magazine called him "the most in-demand director in the American theater."
Nichols also made an impact on American cinema with three influential movies in a five-year period. The first, a 1966 adaption of the Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It was nominated for an Oscar in all 13 categories in which it was eligible and won five of them, although Nichols did not take the best director award.
He followed that up a year later with The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman as an aimless college graduate seduced by Anne Bancroft as an older woman before falling in love with her daughter. Nichols won an Academy Award for his direction and the movie, which thanks to several memorable lines and the music of Simon and Garfunkel, became a 1960s cultural touchstone.
In 1971, Nichols put out Carnal Knowledge, which created a sensation because of its sexual nature. The manager of a movie theater in Georgia was arrested for showing the film and had to appeal his case to the US Supreme Court before being exonerated.
Sometimes Nichols' movies did go off the road. Catch-22, Day of the Dolphin and The Fortune were generally considered commercially unsuccessful and he did not make a feature film from 1975 until 1983, rebounding with Silkwood, for which he was nominated for another Oscar.
In the second act of his movie career, Nichols directed Heartburn, Biloxi Blues, Postcards from the Edge, Regarding Henry, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Charlie Wilson's War and Working Girl, which earned him another Oscar nomination.