Sam Mendes Net Worth

What Is Sam Mendes' Net Worth and Salary?

Sir Samuel Mendes CBE is a British stage and film director, screenwriter, and producer who has a net worth of $30 million. 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). Sam produced "Road to Perdition," "Revolutionary Road," and "1917," and he wrote "1917." He also produced several projects that he did not direct, such as "The Kite Runner" (2007), "Shrek the Musical" (2013), "The Hollow Crown" (2012; 2016), "Penny Dreadful" (2014–2016), "Informer" (2018), "Britannia" (2017–2019), and "Penny Dreadful: City of Angels" (2020).

Onstage, Mendes has directed Broadway productions of "Cabaret" (1998; 2014), "The Blue Room" (1998), "Gypsy" (2003), "Vertical Hour" (2006), "The Ferryman" (2018), and "The Lehman Trilogy" (2021), winning Tony nominations for Best Direction of a Play for "The Ferryman" and "The Lehman Trilogy." His theatrical work has also earned him three Laurence Olivier Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, and a Drama Desk Award. In 2020, Sam was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to Drama in the New Years Honours List, and he received the Alfred Toepfer Foundation's Shakespeare Prize.

Early Life

Sam Mendes was born Samuel Alexander Mendes on August 1, 1965, in Reading, Berkshire, England. He is the son of author/publisher Valerie Mendes and university professor Jameson Peter Mendes. Jameson is a Roman Catholic from Trinidad and Tobago, and Valerie is Jewish and British. Sam's grandfather was Alfred Hubert Mendes, a Trinidadian writer. When Mendes was 3 years old, his parents divorced, and he moved to Primrose Hill, North London, with his mother. He studied at Primrose Hill Primary School, and in 1976, Sam and Valerie moved near Oxford and she took a job at Oxford University Press as a senior editor. Mendes attended Magdalen College School, then he applied to the University of Warwick to study film, but he was not accepted. He later graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge, with  first-class honours in English. At Cambridge, Sam joined the Marlowe Society and began directing plays such as "Cyrano de Bergerac." Mendes played cricket during his youth, and "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack" called him a "brilliant schoolboy cricketer" when he was playing for Magdalen College School. He played at Cambridge as well, and he played for Shipton-under-Wychwood in the Village Cricket Cup finals in 1997.

Stage Career

After graduating from college, Sam began working as an assistant director at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and he made his professional debut in 1987 when he directed the Anton Chekhov plays "The Proposal" and "The Bear." He became the Minerva Theatre's inaugural director in 1989, and later that year, he replaced Robin Phillips as the director of a Chichester production of Dion Boucicault's "London Assurance" and directed Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" at the Aldwych (starring Judi Dench). After six months at Chichester, "London Assurance" moved to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End. In 1990, Mendes was hired to be the artistic director at the Donmar Warehouse, where he oversaw the redesign of the theatre. In 1993, he directed John Kander and Fred Ebb's "Cabaret" there, and it was nominated for four Laurence Olivier Awards. The production later transferred to Broadway's Stephen Sondheim Theater, and it earned Sam his first Tony nomination. He followed the success of "Cabaret" with productions of Lionel Bart's "Oliver!" (1994), David Hare's "The Blue Room" (1998), Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain" (1999), Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" (2002), and Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" (2002) at the Donmar. Mendes stepped down as artistic director in late 2002, then he directed Sondheim's "Gypsy" at Broadway's Shubert Theatre in 2003. He later directed Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in the West End (2013–2017), Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the National Theatre, 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, London (2018) and Broadway's Nederlander Theatre (2021–2022).

Film Career

Sam's first film was 1999's "American Beauty," which grossed $356.3 million at the box office and won five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. Next, he directed and produced 2002's "Road to Perdition," which starred Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. The film brought in $183.4 million at the box office and received six Academy Award nominations. In 2003, Mendes launched the production company Neal Street Productions, and in 2005, he directed "Jarhead," a war drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jamie Foxx. Sam directed his then-wife Kate Winslet in 2008's "Revolutionary Road," which earned three Academy Award nominations, then he directed the 2009 John Krasinski–Maya Rudolph comedy-drama "Away We Go." His next two films were the James Bond movies "Skyfall" (2012) and "Spectre" (2015), which grossed $1.109 billion and $880.7 million, respectively. "Skyfall" received five Academy Award nominations, winning Best Original Song (Adele's "Skyfall") and Best Sound Editing. After his foray into the world of James Bond, Sam directed the 2019 war epic "1917," which he also wrote and produced. The film earned $384.9 million at the box office and won more than 70 awards, including Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture – Drama and BAFTA Awards for Best Director, Best Film, and Outstanding British Film. In April 2021, it was announced that Mendes would be writing, directing, and producing "Empire of Light," a "love story set in and around a beautiful old cinema on the South Coast of England in the 1980s."

Personal Life

Sam met actress Kate Winslet in 2001 when he asked her to star in a play at the Donmar Warehouse. They married on May 24, 2003, while they were on vacation in Anguilla, and they welcomed son Joe on December 22, 2003. Sam and Kate announced their separation in early 2010 amid speculation that Mendes was having an affair with actress Rebecca Hall, and their divorce was finalized that October. Mendes and Hall split up in 2013, and he married trumpeter Alison Balsom on January 26, 2017. The couple have a daughter, Phoebe, who was born in September 2017. In 2009, Sam signed a petition calling for Switzerland to release director Roman Polanski after his arrest for allegedly drugging and raping a 13-year-old in 1977. Mendes opposes Brexit, and he stated in 2017, "I'm afraid that the winds that were blowing before the First World War are blowing again. There was this generation of men fighting then for a free and unified Europe, which we would do well to remember."

Awards and Nominations

Mendes has been nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Director for "American Beauty" in 2000. His other nominations were for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing, and Best Original Screenplay for "1917" in 2020. "American Beauty" also earned Sam awards from the Amanda Awards (Norway), Awards Circuit Community Awards, Bodil Awards, Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Czech Lions, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards, Danish Film Awards, Directors Guild of America, Florida Film Critics Circle Awards, Golden Globes, Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, Jupiter Awards, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, Kinema Junpo Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, Lumiere Awards (France), Online Film & Television Association, Online Film Critics Society Awards, Prêmio Guarani, Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards, and Toronto International Film Festival. He has received seven BAFTA Award nominations, winning the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for "Skyfall" (2013) and Best Film, Best Director, and Outstanding British Film of the Year for "1917" (2020).

For "1917," Mendes also earned awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, CinEuphoria Awards, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards, Danish Film Awards, David di Donatello Awards, Denver Film Critics Society, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globes, Golden Schmoes Awards, Music City Film Critics' Association Awards, NAMM Technical Excellence and Creativity Awards, PGA Awards, Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards, The BAM Awards, and Utah Film Critics Association Awards. In 2005, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain, and the Hollywood Film Awards named him Director of the Year for "Jarhead." Sam won a Best Director award from the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards for "Road to Perdition" in 2002, and the following year, he was honored as Director of the Year at the ShoWest Convention and earned a Kinema Junpo Award for Best Foreign Language Film for "Road to Perdition." "The Kite Runner" won a Christopher Award for Feature Films in 2008, and "Revolutionary Road" earned CinEuphoria Awards for Top Ten of the Year – Audience Award and Top Ten of the Year – International Competition. In 2013, Mendes won a Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Single Drama for "The Hollow Crown" and a Jupiter Award for Best International Film for "Skyfall." That year he also received two Empire Awards, Best Director for "Skyfall" and the Inspiration Award. Sam was presented with the John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Excellence in Directing at the 2015 BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards, and in 2020, he shared the Spirit of Collaboration Award from the Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards with Thomas Newman.