Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes (born 1 August 1965) is a British filmmaker and stage director. 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. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 15 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".
Born in Reading 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., 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. Most recently, Mendes produced Academy Award nominated film Hamnet.
Mendes is currently developing a set of four individual but interconnected films entitled The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, based on the lives of each of the members of the Beatles.
Early life and education
Mendes was born on 1 August 1965 His father is a Roman Catholic of Portuguese descent from Trinidad and Tobago, and his mother is an English Jew. His grandfather was the Trinidadian writer Alfred Hubert Mendes. He attended Primrose Hill Primary School and was in the same class as future Foreign Secretary David Miliband and author Zoë Heller. In 1976, the family relocated to Woodstock near Oxford, where Mendes's mother found work as a senior editor at Oxford University Press. Having developed a passion for theatre only in his late teens, Mendes became a member of the Marlowe Society at Cambridge and directed several plays. His first play was David Halliwell's Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, and one of his later productions was Cyrano de Bergerac with Tom Hollander and Jonathan Cake among the cast members. He also 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.
Career
Stage career
Early work
After graduating from Cambridge in 1987, Mendes was hired as assistant director at the Chichester Festival Theatre. In September 1987, Mendes made his professional directing debut with a double bill of two Anton Chekhov plays, The Bear and The Proposal. In 1989, he was appointed the inaugural director of the Minerva Theatre. London Assurance then transferred to the West End following a six-month run at Chichester, opening at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
Donmar Warehouse (1990–2002)
In 1990, Mendes was appointed artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, a Covent Garden studio space previously used by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mendes's tenure at the Donmar saw its transformation into one of the most successful and fashionable playhouses in London.
In 1993, Mendes staged an acclaimed revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret starring Jane Horrocks as Sally Bowles and Alan Cumming as Emcee.
Mendes also 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.
After the Donmar (2002–present)
In 2003, Mendes directed a revival of the musical Gypsy. Originally, he planned to stage this production in London's West End with an eventual Broadway transfer, but when negotiations fell through, he brought it to New York. The cast included Bernadette Peters as Rose, Tammy Blanchard as Louise and John Dossett as Herbie.
Mendes also 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. It starred Douglas Hodge as Willy Wonka, followed by Alex Jennings and Jonathan Slinger who later took over the role.
In 2014, Mendes directed Simon Russell Beale in King Lear by William Shakespeare at the National Theatre, London. 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, 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 2019 the play played a season at the Park Avenue Armory in New York before returning for another London season in the West End. The play made its Broadway transfer in 2020 briefly but was stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The play resumed performances in 2021 and went on to receive eight Tony Award nominations winning five awards including Best Play and Best Director of a Play.
Film career
American Beauty to Away We Go (1999–2009)
In 1999, Mendes made his film directorial debut with American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey. He had been approached by Steven Spielberg, who was impressed by his productions of Oliver! and Cabaret. 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.
Mendes's second film, in 2002, was Road to Perdition, which grossed US$181 million. As of October 2023, the aggregate review score on Rotten Tomatoes is currently 81%; critics praised Paul Newman for his performance. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Newman; it won for Best Cinematography.
In 2003, Mendes established Neal Street Productions, a film, television and theatre production company he would use to finance much of his later work. In 2005, Mendes directed the war film Jarhead, in association with his production company Neal Street Productions. The film received mixed reviews, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 61%, and a gross revenue of US$96.9 million worldwide. The film focused on the boredom and other psychological challenges of wartime.
In 2008, Mendes directed Revolutionary Road, starring his then-wife, Kate Winslet, along with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kathy Bates. In a January 2009 interview, Mendes commented, about directing his wife for the first time: "I would open my eyes in the morning and there Kate would be, going, 'Great! You're awake! Now let's talk about the second scene. Mendes's comedy-drama Away We Go opened the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film follows a couple (John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph) searching North America for the perfect community in which to settle down and start a family. The film was well received by critics but performed poorly at the box office.
thumb|right|Mendes (right) collaborated with [[Javier Bardem for Skyfall, November 2012]]
In 2010, 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 Mendes was employed to direct the 23rd Eon Productions instalment 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.
In 2012, Mendes's Neal Street Productions produced the first series of the BBC One drama series, Call the Midwife, following it with a second season which began transmission in early 2013.
Skyfall, Empire of Light, and The Beatles biopic film series (2013–present)
After the success of Skyfall, Mendes was asked if he was returning to direct the next Bond film. He responded, "I felt I put everything I possibly could into this film and it was the Bond film I wanted to make. And if I felt I could do the same again, then absolutely I would consider doing another one. But it is a big task and I wouldn't do it unless I knew I could." It was reported that one reason Mendes was reluctant to commit was that one proposal involved making two films back-to-back, based on an idea by Skyfall writer John Logan, which would have resulted in Mendes and other creative personnel being tied up with filming for around four years. It was reported in February 2013 that this idea had since been shelved and that the next two films would be stand-alone. Mendes said in an interview with film magazine Empire in March 2013 that "it has been a very difficult decision not to accept Michael and Barbara's very generous offer to direct the next Bond movie." He cited, amongst other reasons, his commitments to the stage version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and King Lear.
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. Wilson and Broccoli were willing to postpone production of the film to ensure Mendes's participation. On 11 July 2013, it was announced that Mendes would direct the 24th James Bond film, Spectre; it was released in October 2015. This made him the first filmmaker since John Glen to direct two Bond films consecutively. In April 2016, Mendes was named as the president of the jury for the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.
Mendes's next film, war epic 1917, was released by Universal Pictures on 25 December 2019 in the US and on 10 January 2020 in the UK. Based in part on an account told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes, it chronicles the story of two young British soldiers in the spring of 1917 at a critical point during World War I. Mendes went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for his achievement in directing; in his acceptance speech, he saluted his grandfather, as well as acknowledging the contribution to cinema of fellow nominee Martin Scorsese, who was nominated for The Irishman.
On 25 January 2020, he won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, following which he was installed by the press as the favourite to win the Academy Award for Best Director at the then approaching 92nd Academy Awards. However that plaudit went instead to Bong Joon-ho for the South Korean film Parasite. The two directors had shared the honours for directing at the 25th Critics' Choice Awards several weeks prior.
In 2022, his next feature was the romantic drama Empire of Light, starring Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward.
In February 2024, it was reported that Mendes would produce and direct four separate feature films about each member of the Beatles, to be released in April 2028. these will be the first Beatles biopics to have full cooperation from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the families of John Lennon and George Harrison. The films will star Paul Mescal (McCartney), Barry Keoghan (Starr), Joseph Quinn (Harrison), and Harris Dickinson (Lennon).
In April 2025, Mendes's first television documentary film What They Found was aired on BBC Two on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was made in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, and depicts the discovery of the camp using original footage and testimonies of two British Army cameramen. Mendes said the documentary aimed to give "a unique perspective on the discovery of the horrors of Belsen and the reality of the Holocaust." The producers said the film was intended as a historical record at a time when the awareness of the Holocaust had been declining among younger generations.
Filmmaking style and techniques
Influences
Mendes has listed Stanley Kubrick, the Coen brothers, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Howard Davies, David Lynch, Peter Brook, Ingmar Bergman, Orson Welles, and Francis Ford Coppola as amongst his cinematic and theatrical influences. He cited Paris, Texas, Repo Man and True Stories as three "seminal film moments" that influenced his stage and film career, and is also heavily influenced by British comedy acts such as Monty Python, The Goons, Tommy Cooper, and Morecambe and Wise.
Although he has tackled a variety of genres over the course of his career, Mendes has frequently explored themes of family and isolation in his work. The protagonists in his films are realistically flawed and struggle to fit in a world that is hostile towards them, a theme that was initially established in American Beauty and would be further explored in his subsequent films, including Skyfall and Spectre, and 1917. The exploration of such themes are owed to his early childhood experiences, particularly with his parents, with the most direct being his grandfather and his mother serving as inspirations for the characters of Schofield and Hilary Small in 1917 and Empire of Light, respectively.
In an interview in 2014, Mendes explained his reasoning for exploring such themes: "If you are doing a play or a film, you have to have a secret way in if you are directing it. Sometimes it’s big things. American Beauty, for me, was about my adolescence. Road to Perdition was about my childhood. Skyfall was about middle-age and mortality."
Personal life
Mendes has been married to British Classical musician Alison Balsom since 5 January 2017. Their daughter was born in September 2017.
Mendes was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2020 New Years Honours List for services to drama.
In 2009, 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.
Favourite films
In 2012, Mendes participated in the Sight & Sound film polls of that year. Held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, contemporary directors were asked to select ten films of their choice.
- The 400 Blows (France, 1959)
- Blue Velvet (USA, 1986)
- Citizen Kane (USA, 1941)
- Fanny and Alexander (Sweden, 1984)
- The Godfather Part II (USA, 1974)
- Kes (UK, 1969)
- Rosemary's Baby (USA, 1968)
- Taxi Driver (USA, 1976)
- There Will Be Blood (USA, 2007)
- Vertigo (USA, 1958)
Works
Film
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Film
! width="65"| Director
! width="65"| Producer
! width="65"| Writer
|-
| 1999
| American Beauty
|
|
|
|-
| 2002
| Road to Perdition
|
|
|
|-
| 2005
| Jarhead
|
|
|
|-
| 2007
| Things We Lost in the Fire
|
|
|
|-
| 2008
| Revolutionary Road
|
|
|
|-
| 2009
| Away We Go
|
|
|
|-
| 2012
| Skyfall
|
|
|
|-
| 2015
| Spectre
|
|
|
|-
| 2019
| 1917
|
|
|
|-
| 2022
| Empire of Light
|
|
|
|-
|2025
|Hamnet
|
|
|
|-
| 2028
| The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event
|
|
|
|}<!-- Per WP:FILM, we only add films to this list ONLY when filming starts, NOT when they get a release date. Please do NOT edit this section until you at least discuss it on the Talk Page. -->
Executive producer
- Starter for 10 (2006)
- The Kite Runner (2007)
- Out of the Ashes (2010) (Documentary)
- Blood (2012)
Television
Executive producer
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Notes
|-
| 2007
| Stuart: A Life Backwards
| Television film
|-
| rowspan="5"| 2012
| Call the Midwife
|
|-
| Richard II
| rowspan="4"| Television film
|-
| Henry IV, Part I
|-
| Henry IV, Part II
|-
| Henry V
|-
| 2014–16
| Penny Dreadful
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
| The Hollow Crown: Richard III
| rowspan="3"| Television film
|-
| The Hollow Crown: Henry VI, Part I
|-
| The Hollow Crown: Henry VI, Part II
|-
| 2017
| Britannia
|
|-
| 2018
| Informer
|
|-
| 2020
| Penny Dreadful: City of Angels
|
|-
| 2024
| The Franchise
| Co-creator; directed first episode
|-
|2025
|What They Found
|Television documentary film
|}
Theatre
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Year
!Title
!Venue
!Notes
|-
|1992
|Assassins
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
| rowspan="3" |1993
|The Tempest
|Royal Shakespeare Theatre
|Royal Shakespeare Company
|-
|The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
|Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre
|London
|-
|Cabaret
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
|1994
|Glengarry Glen Ross
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
| rowspan="2" |1995
|Oliver!
|London Palladium
|West End
|-
|Company
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
|1996
|The Glass Menagerie
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
|1997
|Othello
|Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre
|London
|-
| rowspan="3" |1998
|Cabaret
|Henry Miller Theatre and Studio 54
|Broadway
|-
| rowspan="2" |The Blue Room
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
|Cort Theatre
|Broadway
|-
| rowspan="2" |2002
|Uncle Vanya
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
|Twelfth Night
|Donmar Warehouse
|London
|-
| rowspan="2" |2003
|Uncle Vanya
|Brooklyn Academy of Music
|New York City
|-
|Twelfth Night
|Brooklyn Academy of Music
|New York City
|-
|2003
|Gypsy
|Shubert Theatre
|Broadway
|-
|2006
|The Vertical Hour
|Music Box Theatre
|Broadway
|-
|2010
|The Tempest
|The Old Vic
|London
|-
|2011
|Richard III
|The Old Vic
|London
|-
|2013
|Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
|Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
|West End
|-
|2014
|King Lear
|Olivier Theatre, Royal National Theatre
|London
|-
|2017
| rowspan="2" |The Ferryman
|Royal Court Theatre and Gielgud Theatre
|London and West End
|-
|2018
|Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
|Broadway
|-
| rowspan="2" |2018
| rowspan="4" |The Lehman Trilogy
|Lyttleton Theatre, Royal National Theatre
|London
|-
|Park Avenue Armory
|New York City
|-
|2019
|Piccadilly Theatre
|West End
|-
|2021
|Nederlander Theatre
|Broadway
|-
|2023
|The Motive and the Cue
|Lyttleton Theatre, Royal National Theatre and Noël Coward Theatre
|London and West End
|-
| rowspan="2" |2024
| rowspan="2" |The Hills of California
|Harold Pinter Theatre
|West End
|-
|Broadhurst Theatre
|Broadway
|}
Awards and honours
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Awards and nominations received for films directed by Mendes
|-
! rowspan="2" | Year
! rowspan="2" | Title
! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" width=160| Academy Awards
! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" width=160| BAFTA Awards
! colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" width=160| Golden Globe Awards
|-
! Nominations
! Wins
! Nominations
! Wins
! Nominations
! Wins
|-
| 1999
| American Beauty
| align=center| 8
| align=center| 5
| align=center| 14
| align=center| 6
| align=center| 6
| align=center| 3
|-
| 2002
| Road to Perdition
| align=center| 6
| align=center| 1
| align=center| 3
| align=center| 2
| align=center| 1
|
|-
| 2008
| Revolutionary Road
| align=center| 3
|
| align=center| 4
|
| align=center| 4
| align=center| 1
|-
| 2012
| Skyfall
| align=center| 5
| align=center| 2
| align=center| 8
| align=center| 2
| align=center| 1
| align=center| 1
|-
| 2015
| Spectre
| align=center| 1
| align=center| 1
|
|
| align=center| 1
| align=center| 1
|-
| 2019
| 1917
| align=center| 10
| align=center| 3
| align=center| 9
| align=center| 7
| align=center| 3
| align=center| 2
|-
|2022
|Empire of Light
| align=center| 1
|
| align=center| 3
|
| align=center| 1
|
|-
! colspan="2"| Total
! align=center| 34
! align=center| 12
! align=center| 41
! align=center| 17
! align=center| 17
! align=center| 8
|}
Directed Academy Award performances<br />
Under Mendes' direction, these actors have received Academy Award nominations (and wins) for their performances in their respective roles.
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Year
!Performer
!Film
!Result
|-
! colspan="4" |Academy Award for Best Actor
|-
|1999
|Kevin Spacey
|American Beauty
|
|-
! colspan="4" |Academy Award for Best Actress
|-
|1999
|Annette Bening
|American Beauty
|
|-
! colspan="4" |Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
|-
|2002
|Paul Newman
|Road to Perdition
|
|-
|2008
|Michael Shannon
|Revolutionary Road
|
|-
|}
See also
- List of British film directors
- List of Academy Award winners and nominees from Great Britain
- List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees – Youngest winners for Best Director
- List of Golden Globe winners
- Sam Mendes's unrealised projects
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
- Charlie Rose interview, 5 June 2009
- Brandon Kosters interview, 2 June 2009
- The Observer interview, 14 December 2008