Mike Nichols Movies and Career Information

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. 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. Nichols formed a comedy team with Del Close and Elaine May, with whom he appeared in nightclubs, on radio, released best-selling records,