Getty ImagesAcclaimed director Mike Nichols died suddenly Wednesday night. He was 83.
Nichols, who was married to Diane Sawyer from 1988 until his death, was described as a "true visionary" by ABC News president James Goldston when the network announced Thursday morning that he had passed.
During his lengthy career, Nichols boasted an impressive body of work, including movies like The Graduate, Working Girl, The Birdcage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He is one of the few people to have won an Emmy, a Gramy, an Oscar and a Tony (EGOT).
He won an Academy Award for The Graduate in 1968, and between 1964 and 2012, he picked up six Tony awards for his directorial work—more than anyone. Some of his most notable stage works included The Odd Couple and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He won nine Tony Awards in total, including two for producing as well as directing a musical, Monty Python's Spamalot, in 2005.
He won a Grammy for his 1961 comedy album, An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May. He won multiple Emmy Awards, as well, including one directing the 2004 miniseries Angels in America.
"I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you," he once said, per NBC News. "If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives."
Nichols had recently been immersed in a new project for HBO to adapt Master Class, Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play about opera legend Maria Callas. This reunited him with Meryl Streep, who he worked with on multiple projects, including Angels in America.
Nichols, born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in 1931 in Berlin, fled Nazi Germany for the United States when he was 7. He is survived by his wife, Sawyer, three children from a previous marriage and four grandchildren.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.