43 Facts About Sam Mendes

Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes was born on 1 August 1965 and is a British film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter.

In 2000, Mendes was appointed a CBE for his services to drama, and he was knighted in the 2020 New Years Honours List.

Sam Mendes read English at Peterhouse at Cambridge University, and began directing plays there before joining Donmar Warehouse, which became a centre of 1990s London theatre culture.

Sam Mendes directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Sam Mendes has since directed the films Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, and the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre.

Sam Mendes was born on 1 August 1965 in Reading, Berkshire.

Sam Mendes's father is a Roman Catholic of Portuguese descent from Trinidad and Tobago, and his mother is an English Jew.

Sam Mendes's grandfather was the Trinidadian writer Alfred Hubert Mendes.

Sam Mendes's parents divorced when he was three years old, after which Sam Mendes and his mother settled in Primrose Hill in North London.

Sam Mendes attended Primrose Hill Primary School and was in the same class as future Foreign Secretary David Miliband and author Zoe Heller.

In 1976, the family relocated to Woodstock near Oxford, where Sam Mendes's mother found work as a senior editor at Oxford University Press.

Sam Mendes was educated at Magdalen College School where he met future theatre designer Tom Piper, who went on to work with Sam Mendes on a National Theatre revival of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party.

Sam Mendes had an early interest in cinema and applied to the University of Warwick, but was turned down.

Sam Mendes was then accepted by Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honours in English.

Sam Mendes cited Paris, Texas, Repo Man and True Stories as three "seminal film moments" that influenced his stage and film career.

Sam Mendes was noted as a "brilliant schoolboy cricketer" by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, scoring 1,153 runs at 46 and taking 83 wickets at under 16 for Magdalen College School in 1983 and 1984.

Sam Mendes played cricket for Cambridge University Cricket Club, and in 1997 played for Shipton-under-Wychwood in the final of the Village Cricket Cup, the only winner of the Academy Award for Best Director to have played at Lord's.

In September 1987, Sam Mendes made his professional directing debut with a double bill of two Anton Chekhov plays, The Bear and The Proposal.

In 1989, following the abrupt departure of director Robin Phillips, Sam Mendes took over a production of Dion Boucicault's London Assurance at Chichester.

Later that year, Sam Mendes made his West End debut at the Aldwych with a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, starring Judi Dench.

In 1990, Sam Mendes was appointed artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, a Covent Garden studio space previously used by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Sam Mendes spent two years overseeing the redesign of the theatre, which formally opened in 1992 with the British premiere of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins.

In 1993, Sam Mendes staged an acclaimed revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret starring Jane Horrocks as Sally Bowles and Alan Cumming as Emcee.

Bart added new musical material and Sam Mendes updated the book slightly, while the orchestrations were radically rewritten to suit the show's cinematic feel.

Sam Mendes directed productions of David Hare's The Blue Room in 1998, starring Nicole Kidman; Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain in 1999, with Colin Firth, David Morrissey and Elizabeth McGovern; as well as his farewell duo in 2002, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, both headed by Simon Russell Beale, Helen McCrory, Emily Watson and Mark Strong.

Sam Mendes stepped down as artistic director of the Donmar in December 2002 and was succeeded by Michael Grandage.

In 2003, Sam Mendes directed a revival of the musical Gypsy.

Sam Mendes directed the 2013 Olivier Award-nominated stage adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which ran in London's West End until January 2017.

In 2014, Sam Mendes directed Simon Russell Beale in King Lear by William Shakespeare at the National Theatre, London.

Sam Mendes directed Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman for the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2017, before transferring to the West End later that year and Broadway in 2018, for which he won an Olivier Award and Tony Award for Best Director.

In 2018, Sam Mendes directed The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini in an English adaptation by Ben Power for the National Theatre, London starring Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles.

In 1999, Sam Mendes made his film directorial debut with American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey.

Sam 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.

In 2003, Sam Mendes established Neal Street Productions, a film, television and theatre production company he would use to finance much of his later work.

In 2005, Sam Mendes directed the war film Jarhead, in association with his production company Neal Street Productions.

In 2008, Sam Mendes directed Revolutionary Road, starring his then-wife, Kate Winslet, along with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kathy Bates.

In 2010, Sam Mendes co-produced a critically acclaimed documentary film Out of the Ashes that deals with cricket in Afghanistan.

On 5 January 2010, news broke that Sam Mendes was employed to direct the 23rd Eon Productions instalment of the James Bond franchise.

Sam 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.

However, on 29 May 2013, it was reported that Mendes was back in negotiations with producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to direct the next Bond film, going back on his previous comments.

Sam Mendes had a stepdaughter from Winslet's first marriage to filmmaker Jim Threapleton.

Sam Mendes was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2020 New Years Honours List for services to drama.

In 2009, Sam Mendes signed a petition in support of film director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.