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Mike Nichols, Award-Winning Film and Stage Director, Dies at 83

By Sybile Penhirin | November 20, 2014 3:18pm
 Mike Nichols died at the age of 83 on Nov. 19, 2014.
Mike Nichols died at the age of 83 on Nov. 19, 2014.
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Walter McBride/Getty Images

NEW YORK CITY — Mike Nichols, an internationally acclaimed film and theater director known for movies such as "The Graduate" and "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" died on Wednesday afternoon, ABC News said.

“He was a true visionary, winning the highest honors in the arts for his work as a director, writer, producer and comic,” ABC News President James Goldston wrote Thursday morning.

Nichols, who was 83 years old, was married to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer (his fourth wife) since 1988. He died suddenly of cardiac arrest in Manhattan, The New York Times reported.

Nichols, a Germany native, grew up in New York after fleeing the Nazis during World War II. He attended P.S. 87 and graduated from Walden School, both located on the Upper West Side.

After dropping out of New York University and the University of Chicago, where he had enrolled in a pre-med program, he was accepted to the Actors Studio in New York.

Nichols soon became one the few directors to have a successful career both in Hollywood and on Broadway.

He directed internationally acclaimed movies such as "The Graduate" for which he won the Best Director Golden Globe and an Academy Award in 1968 — as well as "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), "Working Girl" (1988), "The Birdcage" (1996) and "Closer" (2004), among others.

On stage, he directed several Tony Award-winning plays including "Barefoot in the Park" (1964), "The Odd Couple" (1965) and more recently, "Death of a Salesman" (2012).

“[He] was as one of a tiny few to win the EGOT — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony,” the ABC News president said in his note.

Throughout his five-decade career, Nichols worked with world-renowned actors such as Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In 2010, he received the AFI Life Achievement Award. 

Nichols is survived by his wife, three children and four grandchildren. The family will hold a small, private service this week, and a memorial will be held at a later date, the ABC News president said.