The last time he was on Broadway, director Mike Nichols was asked what his secret was to getting the best from his actors.

“If you can get it right, there’s no mystery,” he said in a rehearsal room for the 2013 revival of “Betrayal” starring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. “It’s not about mystery… It’s about our lives.”

Nichols, who died Wednesday at age 83, was the enemy of riddles, of inscrutability, of charades. During a long and illustrious career in the arts that included stage, films and TV, Nichols searched for truth, humor and celebrated real human flaws.

The suave, bespectacled Nichols said he wanted work presented in a way “so that you are part of it and it is part of you.” He wanted to find the connections between people, to prove that whatever was happening onscreen or onstage wasn’t so different from what the audience was going through.

“I’ve seen plays about South Africa where I’ve felt that. We all have. We’re all people and if somebody can find the heart of what they’re doing and why, we can say, ‘Oh, yeah, me, too. Me, too,”’ he said. “I love that. That’s fun.”