Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, best known for The Graduate and a string of hit comedies, will receive the Directors Guild of America's lifetime achievement award at its 56th annual awards ceremony on February 7.
"In his 37 years of directing films, Mike Nichols has brought millions of movie-goers into the cinema," said Michael Apted, the guild's president. "He has done it with class, intelligence and always good humour."
Nichols, 72, has been nominated four times for best directing Oscars, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Silkwood and Working Girl, but won for the 1967 film The Graduate. Other films include Primary Colors, The Birdcage and Postcards From the Edge.
Nichols joins past lifetime achievement recipients such as Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
