Sam Mendes

Sir
Sam Mendes
CBE
Mendes in 2022
Born
Samuel Alexander Mendes

(1965-08-01) 1 August 1965 (age 59)
Reading, Berkshire, England
EducationMagdalen College School
Alma materPeterhouse, Cambridge
Occupations
  • Director
  • producer
  • screenwriter
Years active1987–present
Spouses
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 2003; div. 2011)​
  • ​
    (m. 2017)​
Children2 including Joe Anders
RelativesValerie Mendes (mother)
Alfred Mendes (grandfather)
AwardsFull list

Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965[1]) 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. In 2000, Mendes was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Hamburg, Germany. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain.[2][3] In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 15 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".[4]

Born in Berkshire to a Trinidadian Catholic father and an English Jewish mother, Mendes grew up in North London. He 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.[5] In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1993), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003).

He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013). For his work on the London stage, Mendes has received three Laurence Olivier Awards for Company, Twelfth Night and The Ferryman and for his work on Broadway he has earned two Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play for his work on The Ferryman in 2019, and The Lehman Trilogy in 2022.

In film, he made his directorial debut with the drama American Beauty (1999), which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director. He has since directed the films Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005), Revolutionary Road (2008), and the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). For the war film 1917 (2019), he received the BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as his second Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.[6]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference IndependentBurrell was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Sam Mendes gets directing honour". BBC. Retrieved 18 June 2012
  3. ^ "Caine heads birthday honours list". BBC. 17 June 2000. Retrieved 30 April 2011.
  4. ^ "The 100 most powerful people in British culture". The Daily Telegraph. 9 November 2016. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference PlaybillWebb was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Horton, Adrian (6 January 2020). "Golden Globes 2020: Fleabag and 1917 lead British invasion with major wins". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 January 2020.