"She brought out the best in him, which was great."Īnd just when most careers begin slowing, his once again flourished. "There was the Mike before Diane, and the Mike after Diane," Bergen said. When he was 56, Mike Nichols married for the fourth time, to journalist Diane Sawyer. "When he started to work with Meryl Streep, I think he met an actor completely naturally in sync with his approach as a director: How do I make this real?" Rocca asked, "He said, 'Meryl woke me up.' What did he mean?" With 1983's "Silkwood," Nichols began a longtime collaboration with Meryl Streep. "And loving talent so much that you burst into tears is a Mike thing. "Sometimes people ask me what makes Mike different than other directors," Harris said. After first seeing her perform in a tiny theater, Harris writes, Nichols went backstage to meet her and burst into tears. He brought a little-known Whoopi Goldberg to Broadway. Mike Nichols had flops … more than a few … but the theater always welcomed him back. "I think he felt insulated by money," Bergen said. He loved affluence."Īnd Arabian horses, in which he'd invested money. "Caviar and fois gras and Château d'Yquem. And I went, 'Oh, my God!'"īy then, Nichols was accustomed to living large. "I was so young when I did 'Carnal Knowledge,' I didn't even know what it was about, until I saw it again at Mike's house ten years later. He was sort of the apotheosis of the arts and of wit and of generosity. She said, "It was by far the most important friendship that I think I ever had.
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By the end of its run in theatres, "The Graduate" had become the third highest-grossing movie in American history.įor 1971's sexually provocative "Carnal Knowledge," Nichols cast his longtime friend Candice Bergen. It won Nichols an Oscar, and awakened a whole new generation of moviegoers. Robinson: "I don't think we have much to say to each other. Robinson, do you think we could at say a few words to each other first this time?" It was a critical and box office triumph.įor his next film, "The Graduate," Nichols cast an unknown, Dustin Hoffman, for his dark comedy about an aimless college grad having an affair with an older woman.īen Braddock: "Mrs. "Mike would say that he didn't know what to do," Harris replied.īut Nichols' bedside manner with his superstar couple ensured that the studio said yes. Rocca asked, "How the heck did he even know what to do?" And for his film directing debut, he took on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" starring, indisputably, at that time the world's most famous couple: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The play was a hit, and Nichols won a Tony – then another, for "The Odd Couple," and at the ripe old age of 33 he headed West. And that was something people really hadn't seen before." Nichols directed Elizabeth Ashley and a young Robert Redford not to play for laughs, but to play it as truthfully as possible: "He wanted you to believe that you were watching two people, almost spying on them, in the privacy of their own sixth-floor walkup studio apartment. Harris said, "Mike realizes that he's a director, and this is what he's meant to be on day one of rehearsals for the first play he ever directed, 'Barefoot in the Park.'" Nichols needed a new gig playwright Neil Simon needed help with his new comedy. They performed on Broadway, grew weary of the grind and decided to part ways for a time. Nichols and May: The Teenagers in a Car Sketch by "He and Elaine May were only in their mid- to late-20s when they kind of took off overnight," Harris said. Their brand of observational comedy soon made Nichols & May very famous. "It was an improvisation before people would even use the word 'improvisation.'" And they were really inseparable after that." It was like two people discovering they spoke the same secret language. He sat down, and he pretended that he was a secret agent and she was a secret agent. Harris said, "Mike saw Elaine in a train station.
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Mike later credited his style of comedy (which was very observational) with how much he had to learn how to be a kid, and learn how to be an American, by watching other kids."Īt the University of Chicago, he began coming into his own performing in plays, and struck a near-instant connection with fellow student Elaine May. "So, a refugee, English as a second language, being bald from a very young age, I mean, he must have felt like an outsider?"
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