Sam Mendes is a noted film and stage director who won an Oscar for his debut movie ‘American Beauty’. He was born in the mid-1960s in England into a family of successful scholars and writers. His childhood passion for theatre evolved into serious talent while he was studying at the University of Cambridge, where he directed the much acclaimed ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’. Soon after graduating in English literature, Mendes started working at the Chichester Festival Theatre before moving to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, where he earned recognition as a director. At the age of 27, he joined Donmar Warehouse as an artistic director, staging a number of plays and musicals over the next 10 years and traveling to the USA for many of them. Some of his most well-known stage productions of this period are ‘Cabaret’ (1994), ‘Oliver!’ (1994), ‘Company’ (1995), etc. At the age of 34, he debuted in films, releasing the much acclaimed ‘American Beauty’ in 1999, which went on to win him the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Thereafter, he directed many stage productions and films, including the movie ‘Road to Perdition’ (2002) and the play ‘Gypsy’ (2003). Among his later works, the most significant are his two films from the James Bond franchise, ‘Skyfall’ (2012) and Spectre (2015).