Sam Mendes

Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director. He is best known for directing American Beauty (1999), which earned him the Academy and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the crime film Road to Perdition (2002), and the James Bond movie Skyfall (2012). He also is known for dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1996), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013). In 2000, Mendes was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to drama" and, in 2005, received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain. --- Mendes was born in Reading, Berkshire, the only child of Valerie Helene (née Barnett), an author of children's books, and Jameson Peter Mendes, a university professor. Sam's father, who is from Trinidad, is of Portuguese and Italian descent, and Sam's mother is an English Jew. His grandfather is the Trinidadian writer Alfred Hubert Mendes. Mendes' parents divorced when he was a child. He grew up in Oxfordshire and attended Magdalen College School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first in English. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Marlowe Society and directed several plays, including a production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Tom Hollander among the cast members. He was also a "brilliant" schoolboy cricketer, according to Wisden and played for Magdalen College School in 1983 and 1984. He also played cricket for Cambridge University. Aged 24, Mendes directed a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in the West End that starred Judi Dench. Soon he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where his productions, many of them featuring Simon Russell Beale, included Troilus and Cressida, Richard III and The Tempest. He has also worked at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1988 as assistant director on a number of productions, including Major Barbara, and directing in "The Tent", the second venue. He later directed at the Royal National Theatre, helming Edward Bond's The Sea, Jim Cartwright's The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, and Othello with Simon Russell Beale as Iago. --- In 1990 Mendes was appointed artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, a studio space in London's Covent Garden which he helped transform into one of the city's more notable theatre venues. He spent his first two years overseeing the redesign of the theatre, and his opening production was Stephen Sondheim's Assassins in 1992. Several successful productions followed. In 1999, Mendes made his movie directorial debut with American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey. The film grossed $356.3 million worldwide. The film won the Golden Globe Award, the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Mendes won the Golden Globe Award, Directors Guild of America Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director,  becoming the sixth director to earn the Academy Award for his feature film debut. --- On 5 January 2010, news broke that Mendes was employed to direct the 23rd Eon Productions installment of the James Bond franchise. The film, Skyfall, was subsequently released on 26 October 2012, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Bond films. Mendes had been employed as a consultant on the film when it was in pre-production, and had remained attached to the project during the financial troubles of MGM. The film was a major critical and commercial success, becoming the 14th film to gross over $1 billion worldwide. --- Mendes married British actress Kate Winslet in May 2003 on what they characterised as a whim while on holiday in Anguilla. They had met in 2001 when Mendes approached Winslet about appearing in a play at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, where he was then artistic director. Their son Joe Alfie was born on 22 December 2003. Mendes also had a stepdaughter, Mia, from Winslet's first marriage to filmmaker Jim Threapleton. The couple's representative announced on 15 March 2010 that "that they separated earlier this year." Winslet said in 2011 that "the first stage of my divorce with Sam came through" on the same day she was filming a divorce scene for her HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. In November 2011, a spokesman for Mendes confirmed that he and actress Rebecca Hall had been dating "for some time".