Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nicholswas a German-American film and theatre director, producer, actor and comedian. He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and an aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their acting experience. Nichols began his career in the 1950s with the comedy improvisational troupe, The Compass Players, predecessor of The Second City, in Chicago. He then teamed up with his improv partner, Elaine May, to form the comedy duo Nichols and May...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 November 1931
CityBerlin, Germany
CountryGermany
Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.
I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies,
That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.
The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.
I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.
There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.
The unconscious is our best collaborator.
Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.
A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.
I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.
Any good movie is filled with secrets.
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.
There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies forever. It's what we wish we could do in real life.