Nichols adds AFI honour to long prize roll

CULVER CITY, California (AP):

Julia Roberts hurled a four-letter word at Mike Nichols to get things rolling for the American Film Institute's life-achievement honour for the director.

"Mike is one of the few people in the world who's an 'egot'," Roberts, the star of Nichols' films Closer and Charlie Wilson's War, said Thursday night to open the star-studded tribute. "It means he's won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony."

Roberts actually was shortchanging Nichols. Along with his best-director Academy Award for The Graduate and his Grammy for a comedy album with former partner Elaine May, Nichols is a multiple winner for the top honours on television and the stage - four Emmys and eight Tonys.

"What doesn't Mike do?" Roberts asked the audience, filled with such Nichols collaborators as Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty, Emma Thompson, Harrison Ford, Shirley MacLaine and Natalie Portman. "Everything about Mike makes everything about everything just better."

Happiness

The dinner honouring the 78-year-old Nichols, held in a Sony Pictures soundstage where part of The Wizard of Oz was filmed, featured clips from his movies and TV programmes, a highlight from his and May's 1960s comedy act, musical numbers and speeches overflowing with hilarious anecdotes and bottomless affection from his collaborators.

Introduced by Streep at the end of the evening, Nichols gushed thanks for his costume designers, cinematographers, script supervisors, makeup artists, composers and other associates.

"If I thanked everyone who contributed importantly over the years, we would be here until Miley Cyrus' AFI award," Nichols said. "All of you made me feel I got away with it. I love the process of making a movie, and doing it with all of you was - despite the fear, the pressure, the budget - happiness."

The tribute to Nichols airs June 26 on TV Land.