S. ... in 1938, to take off the Nazis. Albeit his father's demise various years later left his household poor, Nichols worked his velocity by way of college at the University of Chicago, where he definite to become an actor. After studying with Lee Strasberg in Unripe York, Nichols headed destroy to Chicago, where he formed an improv assemble with several actors, including May and Alan Arkin.

Their comic and critical sensibilities without doubt matched, Nichols and May performed as a doublet in the latter half of the 1950s, earning raves because of their vertical, satirical routines. After their 1960 hit Broadway put to shame, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, closed in 1961, however, they parted ways. Nichols began to direct plays in 1963, earning a first-class standing in place of his work up on a string of hits, including the Neil Simon comedies Barefoot in the Parkland and The Odd Couple. Not surprisingly, Nichols moved to films with an adaptation of a truckle to, Edward Albee's keen study of marital discord, Who's Yellow of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Making the most of a screenplay by Ernest Lehman that leftist Albee's taboo-breaking profanity intact, crisp cinematography by Haskell Wexler, and the casting of glamorous marrieds Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as the warring three, Nichols scored a critical and crate-obligation success. The film earned 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Surpass Commander, and acting nominations for the be ahead of quartet, and won five. Nichols further staked his claim as one of the initial avatars of Hollywood's new begetting the following year with The Graduate (1967). Wittily adapted by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, starring an unknown Dustin Hoffman, and directed with Chic Wave dash by Nichols, The Graduate's mordant portrait of youthful anomie and suburban sexual frustration spoke to late '60s disaffection with the Establishment, and the shoot became a landmark invent. Nevertheless The Graduate lost the Worst Conceive of Oscar to In the Heat of the Nightfall (1967), Nichols won for Upper-class Director. Turning his r‚clame from having it away to war, Nichols seemed to be on target after another favourable triumph when he and Henry unmistakable to trappings Joseph Heller's mocking anti-antagonistic bestseller Catch-22 (1970). Though Nichols and Henry managed to send the book's surreal tone to the screen, and Alan Arkin proved an adept Yossarian, With-22 suffered in balance to Robert Altman's pacifist farce M*A*S*H (1970) and became an expensive damp squib. Nichols quickly recovered with Jules Feiffer's acrid examination of manful sexual gamesmanship, Voluptuous Knowledge (1971).

Remarkable seeing that its frankness (at least for the treatment of Hollywood) and featuring career performances from Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, and Candice Bergen, Carnal Acquaintance became Nichols' third groundbreaking hit. Nichols' film career, despite that, was comatose by the late '70s. The bizarre yet touching dolphin cabal scenario The Day of the Dolphin (1973) flopped; not even 1970s supernovas Nicholson and Warren Beatty attracted audiences to the maligned interval comedy The Fortune (1975). Except as a service to lensing comedienne Gilda Radner's Broadway show Gilda Live (1980), Nichols stayed away from movies for little short of eight years.

He made an auspicious proffer to , however, with the communal drama Silkwood (1983). A biopic in the air the lifetime and mysterious death of atomic whistle-blower Karen Silkwood, Silkwood garnered raves for stars Meryl Streep and a de-glamorized Cher, and earned five Oscar nods, including Defeat Steersman. Despite the fact that he didn't come in the Oscar, Nichols did net his sixth Tony Award in 1984, inasmuch as directing Tom Stoppard's The Actual Id‚e fixe. Rough to his comic ways after Silkwood's seriousness, Nichols bolstered his Hollywood comeback with appealing adaptations of Nora Ephron's autobiographical blockbuster Heartburn in 1986, and Neil Simon's Broadway success Biloxi Blues (1988).

Spinning 1980s corporate ambitions into a cynically charming fairy tale, made all the more pleasant past Melanie Griffith's star-making performance as the eponymous striver, Nichols idea another Oscar nominated impact with with Working Girl (1988). Nichols continued to act with knotty questions of sex, ambition, and relationships fully the 1990s. Directing Carrie Fisher's cuttingly funny modification of her creative Postcards From the Edge (1990), Nichols and stars Streep and Shirley MacLaine made comic hay out of Hollywood craziness. Manly weepie Regarding Henry (1991), featuring Harrison Ford as a chastened Grasp of the World, became a success, but the Jack Nicholson horror-jocose propagative fable Wolf (1994) missed the chip. Reuniting with Elaine May after a few decades, the pair crafted a slick remake of La Cage Aux Folles (1978), renamed The Birdcage (1996). Starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a gay couple with an pledged son, The Birdcage poked fun at the conservative notion of pedigree values and found blockbuster favor with the audience. After Nichols returned to acting on stage and screen in The Designated Mourner (1997), he joined with May to change Joe Klein's untried hither Banknote Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign Primitive Colors (1998). Though Get ready Colors featured Nichols and May's customary intelligent waggishness, and star John Travolta virtually channeled the President, the actual-being 1998 genital drama involving Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky proved to be a greater induce to talk a halt than the fictionalized Presidential shenanigans. Nichols' next film, Garry Shandling's send-up of masculine procreative cluelessness What Planet Are You From? (2000), was an outright flop. Turning to the more tolerant venue of cable TV's HBO, Nichols and Excellent Colors star Emma Thompson masterfully adapted Wit (2001), the Pulitzer Prize-endearing play helter-skelter an imperious professor's eye-opening campaign fight with cancer. Nichols married his fourth helpmate, TV news supernova Diane Sawyer, in 1988.