Who

Hubby to foxy sexagenarian Diane Sawyer, Nichols is the director responsible for The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Birdcage.

Backstory

Born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, as a child the Jewish Nichols fled with his parents from Nazi Germany to the United States. After college in Chicago, Nichols became a part of comedy group called the Compass Players (which later became the legendary Second City), then teamed with Elaine May in the late '50s to form an extraordinarily successful comedy duo. May and Nichols split in 1961, and he turned his attention to theater directing. He won a Best Director Tony for his first stage play, Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, and quickly became one of the hottest directors on Broadway, winning acclaim for productions like The Odd Couple in 1965, which also earned top Tony honors.

Nichols soon moved into directing films, releasing two of the era's most notable films: 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? based on the play by Edward Albee, and The Graduate a year later. Nichols's first disappointment came with Catch-22 in 1970, and after a string of flicks that got lukewarm receptions, in the mid-70s he left cinema to concentrate on theater. He returned to the big screen in 1983 with Silkwood, and has continued to direct for both film and the stage ever since. Nichols' biggest hits in the past few decades include The Birdcage in 1996, Primary Colors in 1998, and the 2003 HBO miniseries version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.

Of note

Nichols' distinguished career has spanned more than five decades, during which time he's been responsible for a number of classic Hollywood films. He's also remained a major Broadway director—some of his bigger productions have included Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and David Rabe's Hurlyburly in 1984, and Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden in 1992. Recently Nichols has been slowing down, picking and choosing his productions more carefully. His most recent cinematic effort was Charlie Wilson's War, a caper about the CIA's operations in Afghanistan in the '80s starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Nichols returned to the stage in the spring of 2008 to direct Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher in a reviewed revival of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl on Broadway.

Trophy case

He's got 'em all. Nichols is one of the few people to have won a Tony, an Oscar, a Grammy, and an Emmy. Perhaps most impressively, the awards have been spread over the course of his career—he won the Grammy in 1961 (for An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May) and the last of his six Tonys (for the Monty Python musical Spamalot) in 2005.

Personal

Nichols's first three marriages—to Annabel Davis-Goff, Margo Callas, and Pat Scott—ended in divorce. He has three adult children (Daisy, Max, and Jenny) from his first two marriages. He married his fourth wife, news star Diane Sawyer, in 1988. Former residents of the Beresford, the couple paid $10 million for an apartment at 1030 Fifth Ave in 2001; their old digs are now occupied by Helen Gurley Brown.