Mike Nichols — director (the graduate) with roots in the Russian Empire
Mike Nichols was born in Berlin on 6 November 1931 as Igor Mikhail Peschkowsky; Britannica and other sources give the names the other way round, Mikhail Igor. He was the son of Pavel Nikolaevich Peschkowsky, a physician, and Brigitte, née Landauer. His mother's family were German Jews: her parents were the anarchist theorist Gustav Landauer and the writer Hedwig Lachmann. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his father's family.
Pavel Peschkowsky was born in Vienna to a Russian Jewish family that had lived in Siberia; other accounts describe him as coming from Siberia himself. The family left Russia after the Revolution and settled in Germany around 1920, where Pavel practised medicine in Berlin.
In 1938 Pavel left Germany for New York, and in April 1939, as the Nazis were arresting Jews in Berlin, seven-year-old Mikhail and his three-year-old brother Robert crossed the Atlantic alone on the Bremen to join him; their mother followed through Italy in 1940. Pavel took the surname Nichols, from his Russian patronymic, and built a medical practice in Manhattan. He died when Mike was twelve. Mike became an American citizen in 1944. According to research for the PBS series Faces of America (2010), Albert Einstein was a third cousin on his mother's side.
Nichols studied at the University of Chicago, where he joined the improvisational Compass Players and began working with Elaine May. As Nichols and May they became one of the best-known comedy duos in America, with the Broadway show An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May (1960) and a Grammy-winning album. He then turned to directing, first on Broadway, where he would win nine Tony Awards over his career, and then in film. His first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), was followed by The Graduate (1967), which won him the Academy Award for Best Director. Later films included Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Silkwood (1983) and Working Girl (1988). With four Emmys as well, he was one of the few people to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
He received the National Medal of Arts in 2001 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2003. He died at his home in Manhattan on 19 November 2014, aged eighty-three.
Tracing the roots — Russian Empire (town not documented)
Born Igor Mikhail Peschkowsky (also given as Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky) in Berlin on 6 November 1931. His father, Pavel Nikolaevich Peschkowsky, a physician, was born in Vienna to a Russian-Jewish family that had lived in Siberia and left after the Revolution, settling in Germany around 1920. In April 1939, aged seven, he was sent to the United States.
.svg?width=900)
Russian Empire (town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"The hardest thing about directing is making it look like you're not."