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
The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day.
In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.
I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really.
Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with.
People, by and large, would rather be talking than listening.
The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
The things that you saw earlier in your life generally have more power than the things you saw last week.
Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking.
Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort.
Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.
We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.
I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.
What we've offered is a house where they could all live.
Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that?