WATCH: 6 Unforgettable Mike Nichols Films

Above: Meryl Streep and honoree Mike Nichols at the 38th AFI Life Achievement Award honoring Mike Nichols in 2010.

Depending on your age, your first awareness of Mike Nichols may have been as the cofounder of the Second City comedy troupe. Maybe you grew up listening to the Grammy Award-winning album, An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Maybe you knew all the lines to his 1966 film adaptation of gay playright Edward Albee's script Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that won five Academy Awards and was Nichols' first film. Or maybe it was his Academy Award-winning 1968 film The Graduate that served as your first introduction to the director.

Nichols died suddenly from cardiac arrest on November 19, at his home in New York, but we will continue watching these films forever.

Angels in America(TV Mini-series) (2 episodes)
In this scene, Al Pacino played closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn.

The Birdcage
This seemingly light comedy took down small-minded America and portrayed a deeply committed couple of the same sex.

Postcards from the Edge
Based on gay favorite Carrie Fisher's memoir of her relationship with her mother, booze, and pills. In this scene, Shirley MacLaine, as Fisher's mother, steals the show, as usual.

Working Girl
The hair! The make-up! And Sigourney Weaver doing a great turn as a Joan Crawford-like boss. (Why didn't she play Joan in Mommie Dearest?)

Silkwood
Cher's role as Silkwood's close lesbian friend earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
An all-time favorite film, directed by Nichols when he was he was 35 with no film experience, it won five Academy Awards.