Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky was born on 6 November 1931, in Berlin, Germany into a Jewish family, and became Mike Nichols, an American film director, writer, producer and comedian, probably best known for directing the 1968 film “The Graduate”, which won him an Academy Award, and the iconic 1970 film “Catch 22”. Sadly, Mike passed away following a heart attack in November 2014.
So just how rich was Mike Nichols? Sources have estimated that Mike’s net worth was $15 million, accumulated during an outstanding career in the entertainment industry spanning more than 40 years.
Mike Nichols Net Worth $15 Million
In order to avoid Nazi persecution, Mike Nichols’ family fled one by one to the United States. Nichols became a naturalized American in 1944, and grew up in New York, where he attended school and briefly studied at New York University, which he soon left and joined the University of Chicago. There he became interested in theater, and directed a theater production of William Butler Yeats’ “Purgatory”, his first directorial work. In 1955 he moved back to New York and joined the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg, and in the same year he began performing with Compass Players. In 1958 he met Elain May, and together they formed the successful comedy duo Nichols and May, performing on stage, on radio, and TV, being rewarded with a Grammy for Best Comedy Album in 1962.
Nichols’ first major work as a director was “Barefoot in the Park” by Neil Simons. It became a huge hit and Nichols was rewarded with his first Tony award. Nichols went on successfully directing Broadway plays, and soon he was considered a superstar of the American theater. His reputation opened the door for him into the cinema world, and in 1966 he was invited by Warner Bros. to direct “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf ?”, an extremely successful cinema hit starring Elizabeth Taylor and Tim Burton. Nichols’ second film, “The Graduate”, brought him the Academy Award for Best Director.
Mike Nichols kept working as both a theater and cinema director through the ’70s and ’80s. Among his notable works are “Carnal Knowledge”, a rather controversial movie due to graphic depiction of sexual intercourse, “Annie”, a Broadway musical that ran from 1977 to 1983 and won him another Tony award, and “Working Girl”, starring Melanie Griffith, one of his best known films, and a financial success very well received by critics and nominated for six Academy Awards.
Among many other successful works, Nichols has also suffered a few professional failures, such as the movie “The Day of the Dolphin” (1977), which brought little profit and did not impress critics, and the Broadway flop “Billy Bishop Goes to War”, which closed after just 12 performances. However, Mike Nichols is one of a few accomplished performing arts’ professionals who have been rewarded with an Emmy, Tony, Grammy and Oscar Award. However, the vast majority of his projects were very successful, covering more than 20 films, and almost 30 stage plays, but most importantly Mike Nichols received more than 50 awards.
Mike Nichols’ other pursuits included horse-breeding (until 2004 he owned a farm in Connecticut, he was known to be fond of Arabian horses) and occasional teaching at The New Actors Workshop in New York City.
Mike Nichols was married four times. His first marriage was to Patricia Scott(1957-60), then to Margo Callas(1963-74) with whom he had a daughter. He had two more children with his third wife, Annabel Davies-Hoff(1975-86). He married for the fourth time in 1988, to Dianne Sawyer and they were together until Mike’s death in 2014.
