Mike Nichols Net Worth

Mike Nichols's Quotes

• A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.
• It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.
• I've never understood that aspect of DVDs, where you suddenly put back the things you took out that could go. Why ruin your movie? With material that you've taken out? I never get that. I don't have that impulse... To put them back seems very unpleasant to me. And pointless. It's like when you've written something, when you cut a paragraph, doesn't it seem dead to you? Doesn't it look like something you'd never want to include, because the point is, it could go? You'll never see anything in my pictures, the stuff that came out, stays out.
• If everybody's adorable, you can't go anywhere, you can't have any events.
• I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

Interesting Facts about Mike Nichols

1. In Berlin, Germany (from whence the family later fled due to the rise of Nazism), Nichols' father was part of a young intellectual circle that included Russian immigrants such as Vladimir Nabokov's sister and Boris Pasternak's parents.
2. He and his younger brother, Robert, fled Berlin, Nazi Germany for the USA in April 1939 due to increasing Nazi atrocities. Their father had already relocated there some years back. The young boys arrived on April 28, 1939 in New York City, where their father, now known as Paul Nichols, had set up a medical practice and become a successful medical practitioner. The boys' mother was reunited with her family the following year in 1940.
3. One of the Directors Guild of America's annual Honorees in 2000.
4. One of only 15 individuals who are "EGOT"s, meaning having received at least one of all of the four major entertainment awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, competitively. The other recipients are Richard Rodgers, Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, Scott Rudin, Robert Lopez, John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Six others (including Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, James Earl Jones, Alan Menken, Harry Belafonte, and Quincy Jones) have won three of the four awards competitively and received an honorary fourth and thus do not, strictly speaking, qualify.
5. One of 5 recipients of the 2003 Kennedy Center Honors; other recipients were James Brown, Carol Burnett, Loretta Lynn and Itzhak Perlman.
6. Lost much of his body hair in his early teen years due to a bad batch of whooping cough vaccine.
7. Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 704-710. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
8. Directed Postcards from the Edge (1990), which was written by Carrie Fisher and based on her relationship with her real-life mother, Debbie Reynolds. He later directed Closer (2004), with featured Fisher's on-screen Star Wars mother, Natalie Portman.
9. Directed 17 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Dennis, Richard Burton, George Segal, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, Ann-Margret, Meryl Streep,Cher, Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, Kathy Bates, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Taylor and Dennis won Oscars for their performances in Wie is bang voor Virginia Woolf? (1966).).
10. According to Jack Nicholson's April 1972 Playboy Magazine interview, Nichols asked Nicholson and other cast members not to smoke marijuana while filming Carnal Knowledge (1971) on location in Vancouver, British Columbia, where cannabis was easily available. Nichols thought that it dulled an actor's performance.
11. Worked at the Howard Johnson's restaurant in New York's Times Square when he was 17 years old.
12. Father of Daisy Nichols (born in 1964), Max Nichols (born in 1974) and Jenny Nichols (born in 1977).
13. From the early 1960s until his death, he was a well-known figure among Arabian Horse fans - as a breeder of over 400 registered Arabians, including owning and breeding many US National Champion horses.
14. Received the first straight $1,000,000 director's salary for Catch-22 (1970). When percentages were figured in, Nichols was the first director to earn $1,000,000, combination salary and percentage of net or gross, from a single film, for The Graduate (1967).
15. He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 2001 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C.
16. Two of his films are on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All time. They are Working Girl (1988) at #87 and Silkwood (1983) at #66.
17. Was interested in directing First Blood (1982) with Dustin Hoffman as John Rambo.
18. Attended the University of Chicago where he became close friends with fellow student Susan Sontag (then Susan Rosenblatt).
19. Formed a comedy team with Elaine May, appearing in nightclubs, on radio and television and most notably at President Jimmy Carter's inauguration gala.
20. Taught occasionally at The New Actor's Workship in New York City.