Mike Nichols, Graduate director, dies

Mike Nichols, one of the most celebrated and prolific directors in the history of American film and stage, whose work included the movies “The Graduate” and “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, has died. He was 83.

He died of a cardiac arrest on Wednesday night. His death was announced on Thursday morning.

Nichols was one of a small handful of people to win an Emmy, a Tony, a Grammy and an Oscar. His body of work included some of the defining American films of the second half of the 20th century, among them “Working Girl,” “Silkwood” and “The Birdcage.” He won an Oscar in 1968 for the seminal comedy “The Graduate.”

Across an extraordinary five-decade career, he won both popular success and critical acclaim as he moved easily between farces, political satires, romantic dramas and literary adaptations. He was known as an actor's director who gave his performers the freedom to be loose and theatrical.

“There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do,” he once said. “It's like falling in love.”

He was a natural-born filmmaker. Nichols had stepped behind the camera when Warner Brothers asked him to direct the “Virginia Woolf” adaptation in 1966. But the finished product was technically self-assured and thematically mature — and Nichols quickly followed it with the cultural touchstone “The Graduate.”

The actors who collaborated with him most frequently were practically Hollywood royalty, including Jack Nicholson, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep, who thought highly of Nichols that she once described him as “my master and commander. You know, my king.”

For the stage, Nichols won more Tony Awards for direction of a play — six — than anyone else. Those included Neil Simon's “Barefoot in the Park” in 1964 and “The Odd Couple” in 1965, and Arthur Miller's “Death of a Salesman” two years ago.

He won nine Tony Awards in all, including two for producing and one for directing a musical, “Monty Python's Spamalot” in 2005.

Before his death, he had been at work on an HBO adaptation of “Master Class,” the Terrence McNally play about the opera legend Maria Callas, which is to star Streep.

He was married to ABC News presenter Diane Sawyer - his fourth wife - whom he wed in 1988.