Mike NicholsFilmography

Born:: November 6, 1931 in Berlin, Germany
Occupation:: Director, Executive Producer, Producer
Birth name:: Michael Igor Peschkowsky
Biography:: A deft humorist and social critic, director Mike Nichols has managed to skewer mainstream sensibilities in crowd-pleasing work throughout most of his career. Collaborating with such renowned writers as Buck Henry and original stage partner Elaine May, the theatrically trained Nichols excelled at...Read More

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High and Low

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's High and Low is set for the remake game with this Mike Nichols-directed production for Miramax Films. David Mamet provides the screenplay for the modern noir about a business executive's crisis of conscious after putting up a ransom for a kidnapped boy he thought was his son, but Read More

1/1/10
My Dad is Better Than Your Dad [TV Series]

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Dan Cortese

Synopsis: One of several reality-based series hastily assembled to fill the breach opened by the TV writers' strike of 2007-2008, My Dad is Better Than Your Dad was a game show in which father-child teams squared off against one another. Put through a variety of athletic, technical and scholastic Read More

2008
Charlie Wilson's War

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ned Beatty

Synopsis: Produced by Tom Hanks, written by Aaron Sorkin, and directed by Mike Nichols, this adaptation of George Crile III's incendiary bestseller tells the remarkable story of the Texas congressman whose efforts to prevent the Red Army from overtaking Afghanistan eventually led to the collapse of the Read More

12/21/07
Closer

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen

Synopsis: Patrick Marber's acclaimed stage drama about the romantic interactions of four people has been given a reverent screen adaptation by director and producer Mike Nichols. Dan (Jude Law) is a writer in London who wants to finish a novel, but in the meantime supports himself by writing obituaries. One Read More

12/3/04
Angels in America

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Justin Kirk, Patrick Wilson, Ben Shenkman

Synopsis: The epic HBO miniseries Angels in America is directed by Mike Nichols and written by the play's author, Tony Kushner. This six-part drama is adapted from the two full-length award-winning plays (Part I: The Millennium Approaches and Part II: Perestroika) originally performed on Broadway in 1993. Read More

2003
Wit

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald

Synopsis: Mike Nichols directs Emma Thompson in this made-for-cable adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Margaret Edson. Thompson plays Vivian Bearing, a college professor who teaches a course on English poetry. Vivian learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer and only a short time to live Read More

2001
What Planet Are You From?

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, Greg Kinnear, Ben Kingsley, Linda Fiorentino, John Goodman, Richard Jenkins, Caroline Aaron, Judy Greer

Synopsis: Garry Shandling makes his big-screen debut as a leading man in this sci-fi romantic comedy. Harold (Shandling) is an alien from another galaxy sent to Earth on a vital mission: in order to ensure that his civilization will prevail, Harold must impregnate an Earth woman. But he discovers that this Read More

3/3/00
Primary Colors

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Adrian Lester

Synopsis: Mike Nichols directed this Elaine May screenplay adapted from the 1996 bestseller by "Anonymous" (Joe Klein), who fictionalized Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. In the New Hampshire primary, Governor Jack Stanton (John Travolta) convinces Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), grandson of a Read More

1998
AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards: Jack Nicholson

Actors: Jack Nicholson

Synopsis: The American Film Institute honors actor and director Jack Nicholson for his years in film by granting him a Life Achievement Award. Nicholson has been a multiple Academy award nominee for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor on several occasions and is famous for many films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Read More

1997
The Designated Mourner

Actors: Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, David de Keyser

Synopsis: This film adaptation of the acclaimed play by Wallace Shawn takes place in an unnamed country, where a repressive regime has come to power and begun rounding up and executing intellectuals. Jack (Mike Nichols), a journalist who aspired to a career as a novelist, sits with his wife Judy (Miranda Richardson Read More

1997
The Birdcage

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest, Hank Azaria, Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart

Synopsis: Director Mike Nichols teams up with his former partner/screenwriter Elaine May for the first time in many years and for the first time together in films to create this sophisticated, remake of the phenomenally popular French musical farce La Cage aux Folles that stars Robin Williams, Nathan Lane Read More

1996
Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light

Synopsis: He is one of the most influential and innovative photographers in the fashion industry and one of the first to elevate his craft into a true art, dominated more by the artist's vision than the subject itself. This documentary tells his story. With an eclectic blend of biographical information, his Read More

1995
Wolf

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Kate Nelligan, Richard Jenkins, Christopher Plummer

Synopsis: Jack Nicholson becomes a werewolf in this bizarre comedy-horror film directed by Mike Nichols. Nicholson plays Will Randall, a book editor with a testosterone deficit who has just been sacked at his publishing firm by a new boss, Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer). A colleague, Stewart Swinton (James Spader Read More

1994
The Remains of the Day

Crew: Producer

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant

Synopsis: Filmed with the usual meticulous attention to period and detail of films from Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, The Remains of the Day is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Anthony Hopkins plays Stevens, the "perfect" butler to a prosperous British household of the 1930s. He is so unswervingly Read More

1993
Regarding Henry

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Bill Nunn, Mikki Allen, Donald Moffat

Synopsis: Combining elements of A Christmas Carol and Rain Man (1988), this modern-day parable of greed and redemption was crafted with generous helpings of sentimentality by director Mike Nicholas. Harrison Ford stars as Henry Turner, a slick, ruthless corporate attorney willing to spin any falsehood to Read More

7/10/91
Postcards From the Edge

Crew: Co-producer, Director

Actors: Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Reiner

Synopsis: Mike Nichols lends some comic structure to Carrie Fisher's best-selling confessional novel concerning a woman's struggles with drug addiction and mother-daughter rivalry (subjects Fisher admits to understanding all too well). Meryl Streep, in her most full-blown comic performance up to that point Read More

9/12/90
Working Girl

Crew: Director

Actors: Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, Alec Baldwin

Synopsis: Unhappy with her job and her loser boyfriend, Melanie Griffith takes a secretarial post at a major Wall Street firm. Her boss is Sigourney Weaver, an outwardly affable yuppie whose grinning visage hides a wicked and larcenous propensity for exploiting the ideas of her employees. While Weaver is Read More

12/21/88
Biloxi Blues

Crew: Director

Actors: Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Matt Mulhern, Corey Parker, Michael Dolan, Penelope Ann Miller

Synopsis: Biloxi Blues was the second of playwright Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical trilogy (number one was Brighton Beach Memoirs; number three, Broadway Bound). Matthew Broderick stars as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome, who is drafted and shipped off to boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in the Read More

3/25/88
Heartburn

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Maureen Stapleton, Stockard Channing

Synopsis: Though she always played coy about the fact in interviews, Nora Ephron's novel Heartburn is a thinly disguised "a clef" rehash of her marriage to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein. Meryl Streep plays Rachel, an influential food critic who marries charismatic columnist Mark (Jack Nicholson) Read More

7/25/86
The Longshot

Crew: Producer

Actors: Tim Conway, Jack Weston, Harvey Korman, Ted Wass, Anne Meara

Synopsis: With a cast starring such comic veterans as Harvey Korman, Anne Meara, Jack Weston and Tim Conway (who also wrote the script), and executive produced by Mike Nichols, it is normally a safe bet that hiliarity will ensue. Unfortunately, this sure thing does not pay off and is disappointingly dumb as Read More

1/17/86
Whoopi Goldberg Live

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this feature, comedienne Whoopi Goldberg appears in a stand-up comedy special performed on Broadway. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

1986
The Gin Game

Crew: Director

Synopsis: D.L. Coburn's1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Gin Game was originally directed by Mike Nichols. This taped TV version was staged by Terry Hughes and performed before a live London audience in October 1979. The scene is the sun porch of a nursing home. Longtime resident Hume Cronyn has avoided Read More

1984
Silkwood

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid

Synopsis: Based on a true story, Silkwood begins and ends with Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) driving along a lonely road in 1974, heading to a meeting with a New York Times reporter to deliver evidence of negligence at the Kerr-McGee Plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma. The balance of the film flashes back to Read More

1983
Gilda Live

Crew: Director

Actors: Gilda Radner, Maria Vidal

Synopsis: Director Mike Nichols makes no effort to inject camera trickery or "mise en scene" in Gilda Live. This is a live comedy concert by the peerless Gilda Radner, and that is enough; Nichols merely records this wonderful lady in action. All of Gilda's standard characterizations -- Emily Latella Read More

1980
Family [TV Series]

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Sada Thompson, James Broderick, Kristy McNichol, Gary Frank

1976
The Fortune

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Stockard Channing, Florence Stanley, Scatman Crothers, Richard B. Shull

Synopsis: Three's a crowd in Mike Nichols's period caper comedy -- or is it? To dodge the 1920s Mann Act barring the transport of women across state lines for "immoral purposes," not-yet-divorced Nicky (Warren Beatty) has felonious buddy Oscar (Jack Nicholson) marry Nicky's runaway heiress sweetheart Freddy Read More

1975
The Day of the Dolphin

Crew: Director

Actors: Pat Englund, George C. Scott, Trish VanDevere, Paul Sorvino, Fritz Weaver, Jon Korkes

Synopsis: Director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry team up again (after collaborating on The Graduate and Catch-22) for this adaptation of Robert Merle's best-selling adventure novel concerning dolphins who become pawns in a plot to kill the president. George C. Scott plays Dr. Jake Terrell, a Read More

1973
Carnal Knowledge

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Cynthia O'Neal

Synopsis: "Maybe you're not supposed to like it with someone you love." With a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (1971) ruthlessly exposed the damage wrought by pre-1960s sexual mores. From their post-World War II college years at Amherst through the Vietnam Read More

1971
Catch-22

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Jon Voight

Synopsis: Director Mike Nichols and writer-actor Buck Henry followed their enormous hit The Graduate (1967) with this timely adaptation of Joseph Heller's satiric antiwar novel. Haunted by the death of a young gunner, all-too-sane Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) wants out of the rest of his WW II bombing Read More

1970
The Graduate

Crew: Director

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Elizabeth Wilson, Murray Hamilton

Synopsis: "Just one word: plastic." "Are you here for an affair?" These lines and others became cultural touchstones, as 1960s youth rebellion seeped into the California upper middle-class in Mike Nichols' landmark hit. Mentally adrift the summer after graduating from college, suburbanite Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman Read More

1967
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Crew: Director

Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis

Synopsis: "You are cordially invited to George and Martha's for an evening of fun and games." Thus read the ad copy for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which in 1966 went farther than any previous big-studio film in its use of profanity and sexual implication. George (Richard Burton) is an alcoholic college Read More

1966