Hollywood stars Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman and Jon Hamm led the celebrity mourners visiting Mike Nichols widow Diane Sawyer on Saturday afternoon.
TV presenters Whoopi Goldberg and Gayle King were among the first guests to arrive at the Upper Eastside, New York, penthouse news anchor Diane shared with her director husband.
Oscar-winner Nichols, who died of a heart attack at the age of 83 on Thursday, was given a small family funeral at the nearby Frank Campbell home.
Then on Saturday afternoon a steady stream of friends paid their respects at the couple's home.
Natalie Portman left 10 minutes later, followed by several TV executives including Lorne Michaels.
Asked about the gathering of 40 family and friends, he said: 'It was good.'
Celebrity newspaper columnist Liz Smith spent an hour and a quarter inside the apartment.
Asked how Diane was coping, she told Mail Online: 'She is good.'
Gayle King spent two hours talking to fellow mourners, including Caroline Kennedy and her husband Ed Schlossberg, Candace Bergin, Ellen Barkin and fellow news anchors Lesley Stahl and Cynthia McFadden.
'It was a beautiful tribute,' Gayle told Mail Online.
'People were walking away from conversations elevated.
'It was a gathering of love.'
Weeds star Mary Louise Parker hugged Whoopi Goldberg as she left.
Looking tearful as she remembered Nichols, Whoopi said: 'It's hard.'
Meryl Streep was the last to leave at 6pm. As her husband Don Gummer stepped outside, he stumbled down a low step.
Meryl rushed forward to grab him and asked: "Are you all right?"
Emma Stone spent 50 minutes at the wake between her two performances in the Broadway hit Cabaret.
She covered her entire face with a fur hoodie as her actor boyfriend Andrew Garfield led her by her hand to a waiting limo.
TV executive Lorne Michaels and Pulitzer prize winning playwright Tony Kushner were among the last to arrive on Saturday afternoon.
Singer songwriter Paul Simon and his wife Edie Brickall left after an hour but refused to speak.
By 3.30pm there was a line of black SUVS and towncars parked along East 84th Street.
Diane's assistant and driver spent much of Saturday morning collecting canapés and snacks from nearby delis.
Several boxes were delivered by upmarket deli Otto before guests started arriving at 2pm.
Nichol's original comedy partner Elaine May was amongst the mourners.
The director's death was confirmed by ABC News President James Goldston on Thursday.
He brought fierce wit, caustic social commentary and wicked absurdity to classics such as The Graduate, The Birdcage, Angels in America and for the stage, Monty Python's Spamalot, in a career that spanned six decades.
His directorial golden touch led him to be one of only 12 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and numerous Tony Awards.
Nichols was married for more than 25 years to TV news anchor Diane Sawyer whom he described as bringing him 'ultimate happiness'.
Mr Goldston said the family were to hold a small private service this week with a memorial to be scheduled for a later date.
'He was a true visionary, winning the highest honors in the arts for his work as a director, writer, producer and comic and was one of a tiny few to win the EGOT - an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony in his lifetime,' Goldston wrote in an email announcing Nichols' death.
'No one was more passionate than Mike.'
The visionary director had never stopped working throughout his long career and was in the middle of a new project for HBO, adapting Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play Master Class about opera legend Maria Callas.
Meryl Streep, who was currently working with Nichols on the show, said in a statement: 'An inspiration and joy to know, a director who cried when he laughed, a friend without whom, well, we can't imagine our world, an indelible irreplaceable man.'
Nichols had been married three times when he met news anchor Diane Sawyer in the 1980s.
He was 54 and Sawyer, then a 60 Minutes correspondent, was 41. They first met in 1986 in a Concorde lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
Sawyer said of that chance encounter, that she knew instantly 'that my life was changing', and that 'he was the center of the dance'
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