Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes\u00a0CBE\u00a0(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\u00a0knighted\u00a0in the\u00a02020 New Year Honours List. In 2000, Mendes was awarded the\u00a0Shakespeare Prize\u00a0by the\u00a0Alfred Toepfer Foundation\u00a0in\u00a0Hamburg,\u00a0Germany. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the\u00a0Directors Guild of Great Britain. In 2008,\u00a0The Daily Telegraph\u00a0ranked him number 15 in their list of the “100 most powerful people in\u00a0British culture”.<\/p>\n
Born in\u00a0Berkshire\u00a0to a\u00a0Trinidadian\u00a0Catholic father and an\u00a0English Jewish\u00a0mother, Mendes grew up in North London. He read English at\u00a0Peterhouse\u00a0at\u00a0Cambridge University. He began directing plays there before joining\u00a0Donmar Warehouse, a centre of 1990s\u00a0London theatre\u00a0culture. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals\u00a0Cabaret\u00a0(1993),\u00a0Oliver!\u00a0(1994),\u00a0Company\u00a0(1995), and\u00a0Gypsy\u00a0(2003).<\/p>\n
For the first time, he directed an original\u00a0West End\u00a0stage musical with\u00a0Charlie and the Chocolate Factory\u00a0(2013). For his work on the London stage, Mendes has received three\u00a0Laurence Olivier Awards\u00a0for\u00a0Company,\u00a0Twelfth Night, and The Ferryman. On\u00a0Broadway, he earned two\u00a0Tony Awards\u00a0for\u00a0Best Direction of a Play\u00a0for \u00a0The Ferryman\u00a0in 2019 and\u00a0The Lehman Trilogy\u00a0in 2022.<\/p>\n
In film, he made his directorial debut with the drama\u00a0American Beauty\u00a0(1999), which earned him the\u00a0Academy Award\u00a0and\u00a0Golden Globe Award for Best Director. He has since directed the films\u00a0Road to Perdition\u00a0(2002),\u00a0Jarhead\u00a0(2005),\u00a0Revolutionary Road (2008), and the\u00a0James Bond\u00a0films\u00a0Skyfall\u00a0(2012) and\u00a0Spectre\u00a0(2015). For the war film\u00a01917\u00a0(2019), he received the\u00a0BAFTA Award\u00a0and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director,\u00a0Best Picture\u00a0and\u00a0Best Original Screenplay.<\/p>\n
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sam Mendes, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes\u00a0CBE\u00a0(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\u00a0knighted\u00a0in the\u00a02020 New Year Honours List. In 2000, Mendes was awarded the\u00a0Shakespeare Prize\u00a0by the\u00a0Alfred Toepfer Foundation\u00a0in\u00a0Hamburg,\u00a0Germany. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-39395","movie_engine_person","type-movie_engine_person","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n