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 only safe thing in filmmaking is to take a chance.
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?
I don't expect anything from reviews. Sometimes I am bemused by them.
I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world.
'Catch-22' was a nightmare to make, and everybody was unhappy except me.
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.
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 you.
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.
I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.
The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.
That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.
Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.