Quotes by Mike Nichols

About Mike Nichols:

Mike Nichols was a German-born American film and theatre director, producer, actor and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s with the improv troupe The Compass Players, predecessor of the Second City in Chicago, and as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. May was also in the Compass. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Closer, Charlie Wilson's War (his final picture), and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of The Apple Tree, Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, m...

Mike Nichols

My father wasn't too crazy about me. I loved him anyway. One of the things I regretted for a long time was that he died before he could see that he would be proud of me. I was actually more what he wished for than he thought.

Mike Nichols

'Streetcar' is no longer about the moment at all. There is no Blanche DuBois anywhere; south, north, east or west. We don't have Blanche DuBois at the moment. But we have Willy Loman; everywhere we look we see Willy Loman. We are Willy Loman. We're o...

Mike Nichols

A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.

Mike Nichols

You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.

Mike Nichols

As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The c...

Mike Nichols

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 d...

Mike Nichols

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.

Mike Nichols

Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for yo...

Mike Nichols

When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he li...

Mike Nichols

Whether something is a success or not has never had much to do with what you do next.

Mike Nichols

My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother...

Mike Nichols

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

Mike Nichols

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.

Mike Nichols

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

Mike Nichols

I am drawn to the mystery of marriage. You can never know what the contract is between two people, and that is a very strong subject. I think it may be my subject.

Mike Nichols

I loved all movies, literally. I certainly loved 'Shane' and 'Roxie Hart.' Later on, when I was less of a kid, I loved 'L'Avventura' and 'Persona' and all Fellini movies and like everybody else I loved John Ford. Then and now, I loved Preston Sturges...

Mike Nichols

The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service of an idea.

Mike Nichols

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?

Mike Nichols

It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while.

Mike Nichols

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.

Mike Nichols

Author Bio

  • NameMike Nichols
  • DescriptionGerman-American television, director, writer, producer and comedian
  • AliasesMikhail Igorevich Peschkowsky
  • BornNovember 6, 1931
  • DiedNovember 19, 2014
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Screenwriter; Film Producer; Actor
  • AwardsAcademy Award For Best Director; National Medal Of Arts; Primetime Emmy Award; Directors Guild Of America Award