Sam Mendes was already a highly-respected director on the stage when he was given the chance to direct his first film, American Beauty, in 1999. That film went on to win Mendes an Academy Award for Best Director, as well as four more Oscars, including Best Picture.
Born on August 1, 1965, in Reading, England, Mendes graduated from Cambridge University in 1987, and immediately went into theater. He directed Judi Dench in The Cherry Orchard, which won him the Critic Circle's Award for Best Newcomer. After spending a few years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mendes became the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London, directing such productions as The Glass Menagerie, The Blue Room, and the much-acclaimed revival of Cabaret. Cabaret won four Tony Awards, including one for Best Revival of a Musical, and led to Steven Spielberg's selecting Mendes to direct American Beauty. Mendes directed other feature films, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road. He continues to spend most of his time directing for the stage, including a Broadway revival of Gypsy.
Career Highlights: American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go
First Major Screen Credit: American Beauty (1999)
Biography
Director Sam Mendes was already a veteran of the Broadway and London stage when he made one of the most auspicious feature film debuts in recent memory with American Beauty, a dark, satirical, and ultimately revelatory vision of suburban discontent. The low-budget Hollywood production struck a chord with audiences and critics, garnering Mendes a truckload of year-end awards.
The soft-spoken director was born in 1965 in England, an only child of Portuguese descent. His parents divorced when he was five. After graduating from Cambridge University, the young Mendes made his mark with several popular, innovative stage productions in London's West End before joining the ranks of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992. By his mid-twenties, Mendes had staked a claim among such peers as Danny Boyle and Nicholas Hytner -- future film directors themselves -- and had already coaxed attention-getting performances from such luminaries as Dame Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes.
Mendes then became artistic director of London's Donmar Warehouse Theater, where he programmed an eclectic mix of Shakespeare, Stephen Sondheim, and Tennessee Williams. Critics noted the director's ability to attract big-name talents seeking to prove their mettle, exemplified by Nicole Kidman's daring, multi-character performance in Mendes' London and Broadway productions of The Blue Room.
It was his stark, Tony-winning rendition of Cabaret, however, which prompted Steven Spielberg to hand Mendes the script for American Beauty. Spielberg's DreamWorks company was the only Hollywood studio to respond to sitcom writer Alan Ball's elliptical tale of Middle American redemption; and in Cabaret, Spielberg saw the work not just of an actor's director but of a distinctly cinematic visionary. In the film's production, Mendes rehearsed extensively with his cast, storyboarding the film with the aid of Spielberg and legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall. Though the picture was conceived as a dark, ironic comedy, Mendes discovered in the editing process a more reverent, spiritual side to the material. Through careful marketing, the film enjoyed a long run at the box office; in a year filled with scandal and tragedy, American audiences responded to its caustic but inspiring tone. Critics and the industry took note as well, as was particularly evidenced by the slew of year-end attention garnered by the film and its director: among American Beauty's many honors were 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Picture win and a Best Director Oscar statuette for Mendes.
Immediately following the win, Mendes laid low for a while, choosing to focus on the Donmar Theatre instead of the piles of scripts that were being thrown his way. (Among the projects Mendes turned down was Charlie Kaufman's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which would later become George Clooney's directorial debut.) He re-emerged in 2002 with the big-budget Tom Hanks vehicle Road to Perdition, a dark rumination on the nature of violence and the seemingly-inextricable bonds between fathers (or father figures) and sons. Prepped for a high-profile Oscar-season bow, Perdition was moved up to the summer to make way for another Hanks/Dreamworks epic, Catch Me If You Can. Still, upon its release, the R-rated Perdition garnered a sizable amount of awards talk for its stark, poetic visual sense, its mournful tone, and a muted, restrained performance from the usually-sunny Tom Hanks. Better yet, Dreamworks' careful, "counter-programming" platform release ensured a healthy box-office life for the film, as it opened to $20 million on less than 2,000 screens. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Mendes made his directorial debut with the box office/critically acclaimed film American Beauty, starring Kevin Spacey. The film grossed US$356.3 million worldwide and had a 2373% ROI. The film won the Golden Globe Award, the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Picture. Mendes won a Director's Guild of America Award, a Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for directing American Beauty.
Mendes' second film, in 2002, was Road to Perdition, which grossed US$181 million. The aggregate review score on Rotten Tomatoes was 82%; critics praised Paul Newman for his performance. The film was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor, and won one for Best Cinematography.
In 2005, Mendes directed the war film Jarhead. The film received mixed reviews, receiving a Rotten Tomatoes aggregate of 60%, and a gross revenue of US$96.9 million worldwide. The film focused on the boredom and other psychological challenges of wartime, instead of being a traditional combat-action film.
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 most recently completed work on a comedy-drama called Away We Go. The film follows a couple searching across North America for the perfect community in which to settle down and start a family. The film stars John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine O'Hara, and Melanie Lynskey. Mendes is also starting pre-production on a film adaptation of the acclaimed 1971 Tony-winning Broadway musical Follies and has announced his intentions to film an adaptation of the novel Middlemarch in the near future.
According to ComingSoon.net, Columbia Pictures has purchased the rights to the Preacher graphic novel series and have hired Sam Mendes to direct it. He will also be an executive producer for the American movie remake of the British mini series Lost in Austen.
1994: directed revival of Oliver! (with score specially revised and added to by the original composer and lyricist, Lionel Bart) at the London Palladium; the show ran for four years, becoming, on 8 July 1997, the longest-running show at that venue.
