American director Mike Nichols was responsible for some of my favourite iconic films of all time spanning over four decades. The first movie he directed was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) where he had to deal with two of the most famous husband and wife actors ever to grace the screen, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. The film was very well received and Nichols had his first Oscar nomination for directing but his leading lady Taylor won an Academy Award for her role as Martha.

Wimbledon Times:

The Graduate (1967)

The film that really got Nichols noticed was The Graduate (1967), which also projected his leading man, a young Dustin Hoffman into movie history as Benjamin Braddock Toy boy to Anne Bancroft’s Mrs Robinson. The film had a great witty script written by Buck Henry, a Nichols regular collaborator. It was also one of the first movies to take advantage of using a current popular musical group (Simon and Garfunkel) to write and perform a brilliant soundtrack including such classics as Mrs Robinson and the Sound of Silence. It also provided Mike Nichols with his first Oscar for Best Director.

Wimbledon Times:
Mike Nichols

Nichols went on to win a plethora of awards and is still one of the few directors who won prizes across different entertainment media with an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony for the Broadway production of Spamalot in 2005.

Nichols continued making successful films through the eighties with Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), Working Girl (1988) and Biloxi Blues (1988) one of my particular favourites with a screenplay by Neil Simon and starring Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken. His last film was Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The film that had a long lasting effect on me was the adaptation of Joseph Heller’s best-selling World War 2 novel Catch-22 (1970) starring Alan Arkin as the protagonist Yossarian and a who’s who cast of famous actors.

Nichols was married to ABC TV news presenter Diane Sawyer and is survived by three children.