#pskwsky-1:

Mike Nichols (born November 6, 1931) is an American Emmy Award,
Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Tony Award-winning stage and film
director, writer, and producer.

Born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, he and his
German-Russian Jewish family moved to the United States to flee the
Nazis in 1939.
New York Passenger Lists;
Name: IGor Michael Peschkowsky age 7 and Robert Peschkowsky age 3
Friend's Name: Paul Peschkowsky
Departure: Bremen, Germany
Arrival: 4 May 1939 - New York, New York
Port of Departure: Bremen, Germany
Ethnicity/Race/Nationality: Hebrew
Ship Name: Bremen

He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944. While
attending the University of Chicago in the 1950s, he began work in
improvisational comedy with the Compass Players, a precursor to The
Second City, and later started the long-running Midnight Special folk
music program on radio station WFMT.

Nichols formed a comedy team with Elaine May, with whom he appeared in
nightclubs, on radio, released best-selling records, guested on
several television programs and had their own show on Broadway,
directed by Arthur Penn. They were accompanied by Chicago pianist
Marty Rubenstein, host of the television show Marty's Place. Personal
idiosyncrasies and tensions (the latter culminating in the out-of-town
closing of A Matter of Position, a play written by May and starring
Nichols) eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in
1961. They later reconciled and worked together many times, with Mays
scripting his films The Birdcage and Primary Colors. They appeared
together at President Carter's inaugural gala and in a 1980 New Haven
stage revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Swoosie Kurtz
and James Naughton.

Nichols has been married four times, most notably to TV journalist
Diane Sawyer, whom he wed on April 29, 1988. He has three children,
Daisy (born circa 1964), Max (born 1974) and Jenny (born 1977). His
daughter-in-law is ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols.

Nichols is a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He also is a
founder of The New Actor's Workshop in New York City, where he
occasionally teaches.