Sam Mendes
Born: 1965-08-01 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK
Known For: Directing
Biography
Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) 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 Year 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 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. He began directing plays there before joining Donmar Warehouse, a centre of 1990s London theatre culture. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1993), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). For the first time, he directed an original West End stage musical 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. On Broadway, he earned two Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play for 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 nomination for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sam Mendes, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Filmography
2025
- Hamnet ... (Producer)
- What They Found ... (Director)
2024
- The End ... (Executive Producer)
- National Theatre Live: The Motive and the Cue ... (Director)
- The Franchise ... (Executive Producer)
2022
- Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
- Empire of Light ... (Director)
- The Sound of 007 as Self
- Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes as Self
2020
- Penny Dreadful: City of Angels ... (Executive Producer)
- Allied Forces: Making 1917 as Self
2019
- 1917 ... (Screenplay)
- National Theatre Live: The Lehman Trilogy ... (Director)
2017
- Baby Driver ... (Thanks)
- Jill Bilcock: The Art of Film Editing as Himself
2016
- Tom Hanks: A League of His Own as Self
- Judi Dench: All the World's Her Stage as Self
2015
- The Late Late Show with James Corden as Self - Guest
- Spectre ... (Director)
2014
- Penny Dreadful ... (Executive Producer)
- National Theatre Live: King Lear ... (Stage Director)
- NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage as Himself
2013
- Toast of London as Sam Mendes
2012
- Skyfall ... (Director)
- The Hollow Crown ... (Executive Producer)
- Everything or Nothing as Self
2010
- Out of the Ashes ... (Executive Producer)
- A Cinematic Life: The Art and Influence of Conrad Hall as Self
2009
- Away We Go ... (Director)
2008
- Revolutionary Road ... (Director)
2007
- The Kite Runner ... (Executive Producer)
- Things We Lost in the Fire ... (Producer)
2006
- Starter for 10 ... (Executive Producer)
- Who Needs Sleep? as Self
2005
- Jarhead ... (Director)
- Unscripted as Self
2002
- Road to Perdition ... (Director)
2000
1999
- American Beauty ... (Director)
1996
- Company as Self
1993
- Cabaret ... (Director)
1991
- Performance as Self
1953
- The Oscars as Self