Quick Facts

Sir Samuel Mendes CBE is a British stage and film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mendes is best known for directing the films “American Beauty” (1999), “Road to Perdition” (2002), “Jarhead” (2005), “Revolutionary Road” (2008), “Away We Go” (2009), “Skyfall” (2012), “Spectre” (2015), and “1917” (2019).

How much is the Net worth of Sam Mendes?

Sam Mendes CBE is a British stage and film director, screenwriter, and producer who has a net worth of $30 million.

Early Years and Education: Which university did Sam Mendes attend?

At Reading, Berkshire, UK, on August 1, 1965, Samuel Alexander Mendes was born. He is the son of Jameson Peter Mendes, a professor at a university, and Valerie Mendes, an author and publisher. Valerie is Jewish and a British citizen, whereas Jameson is a Roman Catholic from Trinidad & Tobago.

A novelist from Trinidad named Alfred Hubert Mendes was Sam’s grandfather. Mendes’ parents got divorced when he was 3 years old, and he relocated with his mother to Primrose Hill in North London. He attended Primrose Hill Primary School, and in 1976, Sam and Valerie relocated close to Oxford, where she accepted a position as senior editor at Oxford University Press.

Mendes attended Magdalen College School before submitting an application to study cinema at the University of Warwick, but he was rejected. Afterwards, he earned a first-class English degree from Peterhouse in Cambridge. Sam joined the Marlowe Society at Cambridge and started directing plays like “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

While playing for Magdalen College School, Mendes was referred to as a “great schoolboy cricketer” by “Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack” during his playing days. He also participated in the Cambridge team, and in the 1997 Village Cricket Cup finals, he represented Shipton-under-Wychwood.

What is the Professional Career of Sam Mendes?

Stage Career

Sam made his professional debut in 1987 as the director of the Anton Chekhov plays “The Proposal” and “The Bear” at the Chichester Festival Theatre after receiving his degree from college. In 1989, he was named the first director of the Minerva Theatre.

Later that year, he took over for Robin Phillips as the artistic leader of a Chichester production of Dion Boucicault’s “London Assurance,” and he also directed Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” at the Aldwych (starring Judi Dench). “London Assurance” transferred from Chichester to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End after spending six months there.

Mendes was appointed creative director of the Donmar Warehouse in 1990, where he directed the theater’s refurbishment. He directed “Cabaret” by John Kander and Fred Ebb there in 1993, and it received four Laurence Olivier Award nominations. Later, the play was moved to the Stephen Sondheim Theater on Broadway, where Sam received his first Tony nomination.

Following the success of “Cabaret,” he directed productions of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (2002), “Oliver!” (1994), “The Blue Room” (1998), “Three Days of Rain” (1999), and “Uncle Vanya” by Chekhov at the Donmar. After leaving his position as artistic director in late 2002, Mendes went on to direct Sondheim’s “Gypsy” at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway in 2003.

Later, he directed Shakespeare’s “King Lear” at the National Theatre in London (2014), Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” at London’s Royal Court Theatre (2017) and Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (2018–2019), and Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy” at the National Theatre in London (2018) and Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre. He also directed Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in the West End (2013 (2021–2022).

Movie Career

“American Beauty,” Sam’s debut feature, was released in 1999 and earned $356.3 million at the box office. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. Next, he produced and directed “Road to Perdition” in 2002, a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. S

ix Academy Award nominations and $183.4 million in box office revenue were collected for the movie. Mendes established Neal Street Productions in 2003, and he directed “Jarhead,” a military thriller with Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jamie Foxx, in 2005. Sam directed his then-wife Kate Winslet in the 2008 film “Revolutionary Road,” which received three Academy Award nominations.

Sam then helmed the comedy-drama “Away We Go” in 2009 with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. James Bond flicks “Skyfall” (2012) and “Spectre” (2015), his next two productions, brought in $1.109 billion and $880.7 million, respectively. Five Academy Awards were nominated for “Skyfall,” which won for Best Original Song (Adele’s “Skyfall”) and Best Sound Editing.

After dabbling in the James Bond universe, Sam helmed the 2019 military epic “1917,” on top of writing and producing it. More than 70 prizes were given to the movie, including the BAFTA Awards for Best Director, Best Film, and Outstanding British Cinema, as well as the Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture – Drama.

The movie grossed $384.9 million at the box office. Mendes will write, direct, and produce “Empire of Light,” a “love story set in and around a lovely historic cinema on the South Coast of England in the 1980s,” it was revealed in April 2021.

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How is the Personal Life of Sam Mendes?

Sam asked Kate Winslet to play the lead in a play at the Donmar Warehouse in 2001, and they became friends. While on vacation in Anguilla, they got married on May 24, 2003, and on December 22, 2003, they had their son Joe. In the midst of rumors that Mendes was having an affair with actress Rebecca Hall, Sam and Kate announced their separation in the beginning of 2010.

Their divorce was then granted in October of that same year. Mendes and Hall divorced in 2013, and on January 26, 2017, he wed musician Alison Balsom. Phoebe, the couple’s daughter, was born in September 2017.  Sam joined a petition in 2009 asking Switzerland to free Roman Polanski, a filmmaker who had been detained for allegedly drugging and raping a 13-year-old in 1977.

Mendes has declared in 2017 that he opposes Brexit “The winds that blew prior to the First World War are, I’m afraid, blowing once more. We would do well to keep in mind the men who fought back then for a free and united Europe.”

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