The cinematographic stage is once more emptied as directors along with actors, producers and world-wide movie lovers are bereaved by the death of Mike Nichols – one of the most charismatic, adored by fellow actors and highly praised directors of all time. The death of the great personality of cinema and theater industry was confirmed by ABC news on Thursday morning. According to The Independent, the dramatic event happened suddenly on Thursday morning and was caused by the director’s suffering a heart attack.
Mike Nichols was one of the few names to receive an EGOT status, by winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. He was the director behind highly acclaimed movies such as the numerously awarded and Simon and Garfunkel sound tracked 1967’s cult The Graduate or his 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. More recently, Nicholas amazed the public with his Emmy Awarded Mini TV-series, Angels in America (2003), the eccentric story about the aids crisis during the mid-nighties and starring already legendary Al Pacino as Roy Cohn and Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosenberg .
James Goldston, the president of ABC news was the one who fist announced the death of the wonderful Mike Nichols, describing him in laudatory terms: “He was a true visionary, winning the highest honors in the arts for his work as a director, writer, producer and comic and was one of a tiny few to win the EGOT—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony in his lifetime,”. He continued: “No one was more passionate about his craft than Mike.”
His last movie, Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) – a comedy-drama starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts – was supposed to be followed by an upcoming project of Nichols. Bearing the name of Master Class, and based on the play written by Terrence McNally, the venture would have been a HBO collaboration and would have centered around opera legend Maria Callas. Meryl Streep was to join the great director once more, as she was a Mike Nichols recurrent actress. Variety remembered Meryl Strrep’s once-confessed opinion on the status of the director, seen as a major figure on the artistic scene: “no explanation of our world could be complete and no account or image of it so rich, if we didn’t have you”.