Family Law

Celebrity Divorce News: Kate Winslet Splits from Sam Mendes

By ckramer

British film director Sam Mendes piloted the project that brought Oscar nominations and Golden Globe awards for himself and his wife, Kate Winslet. And in a heart-warming moment at the 2008 Golden Globe awards, Winslet thanked him from the podium, calling him “babe.”

Now, however, the celebrity couple have announced via their lawyers that they will divorce, following seven years of marriage, according to the Associated Press.

The divorce comes only two years after Mendes and Winslet worked together on the film “Revolutionary Road,” the story of a crumbling marriage. The Oscar-nominated film tells the story of a marriage that falls apart, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of the husband to Winslet?s wife. Winslet won the Golden Globe for her effort as April Wheeler, whose dreams of a life in Paris are dashed by the realities of suburban America.

Mendes directed the film, and received wide acclaim if not an Oscar. He did win Academy Awards for directing the 1999 film “American Beauty,” starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. Mendes got an Oscar nod as Best Director, and the film garnered the Best Picture award, among others.

Winslet has her own fair share of awards, including an Oscar for best actress for her role in The Reader in 2009. She had been nominated many times before that, for roles in “Titanic,” “Iris,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Little Children” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

The couple was not seen together at this year?s Academy Awards.

Mendes, 44, and Winslet, 34, have a six-year-old son together, and Winslet has a nine-year-old daughter with her previous marriage to British director Jim Threapleton, from whom she was divorced in 2001. The statement from their lawyers, Schillings, said that the separating couple were “fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children.”

News sources did not know whether the divorce proceedings had yet begun.

Winslet and Mendes reportedly split earlier in the year, according to ABC News. The divorce is, according to the statement, “entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement.”

They were married in a low-key beach ceremony in 2003, the same year that their son was born.

In her “Revolutionary Road” Golden Globe speech in 2008, Winslet told Mendes from the podium: “Thank you for directing this film, babe, and thank you for killing us every single day and really enjoying us actually being in such horrific pain.”

The couple was famously superstitious, and ABC News tells of a pact that they would never fly on the same plane together following the events of September 11, 2001. Mendes, apparently, nearly boarded the plane that terrorists would crash into the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C.

Mendes was a successful theater director before his turn at the helm of “American Beauty” catapulted him into the role of famous director.

Winslet grew up in an acting family and started early with roles on television. She landed a part in Peter Jackson?s film “Heavenly Creatures” and played Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh?s film version of “Hamlet.” Her grand star turn, however, was her starring role with DiCaprio in the mega-hit “Titanic.”

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on March 19, 2010 (boomark / email).