Would-be Bond 23 director Sam Mendes splits from wife Kate Winslet

16-Mar-2010 • Skyfall

Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet and her director husband Sam Mendes have separated after nearly seven years of marriage, the British couple's lawyer has said. The Hollywood A-listers' split was "amicable", reports SMH.

Winslet, winner of the 2009 best actress Oscar for "The Reader", married Mendes, awarded the Academy Award for best director in 2000 for "American Beauty", in May 2003.

"Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year. The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement," London lawyer Keith Schilling said in a statement Monday.

"Both parties are fully committed to the joint parenting of their children," Schilling added. "They ask that the media respect the privacy of the family."

Winslet and Mendes have a six-year-old son, Joe, and Winslet has a nine-year-old daughter, Mia, from her previous marriage to Jim Threapleton, an assistant director she met while making the low-budget "Hideous Kinky".

The 34-year-old British actress rose to global prominence as the romantic heroine in the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

She was married for just over three years to Threapleton, but they divorced in December 2001. Mendes and Winslet became a couple within two months of her split from Threapleton.

They made their first public appearance in Britain together in 2002 when they attended the premiere of Mendes's second film, "The Road To Perdition".

Mendes, 44, directed his wife in the 2008 drama "Revolutionary Road", an experience he described as "exhilarating", and confessed he saw "a side of her I just didn't know".

The film, about a disintegrating marriage in 1950s suburban America, reunited her with DiCaprio and won her a Golden Globe for best actress.

Often described as one of Hollywood's "golden couples", Winslet and Mendes were based in New York.

They tended to shy away from the celebrity party circuit and instead concentrated on home life.

"As a family we do normal things that other families would," Winslet said last year.

Mendes attended the ceremony with Winslet when she won the Oscar last year, but this year she went to the event alone.

Educated at Britain's prestigious Cambridge University, he made his name as a theatre director, before his spectacular success with "American Beauty" which won five Oscars, including a best actor gong for Kevin Spacey.

His next project will be the 23rd James Bond film, expected to go into production later this year.

Mendes's past loves have included British actresses Jane Horrocks and Rachel Weisz.

Winslet's film career also includes World War II drama "Enigma" in 2001 and the 2006 romantic comedy "The Holiday" with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law.

She scooped the best actress Oscar for "The Reader" last year, after being nominated for an Academy Award five times previously without success.

"I feel like an unlikely hero," she once said of her success.

"I was not the privileged kid things like this could happen to."

The star is currently filming the HBO TV mini-series "Mildred Pierce", with director Todd Haynes and actors Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood, about a divorced single mother.

Winslet's upbringing clearly had a strong influence on her career choice -- both her parents were actors and her grandparents ran a theatre in her home town of Reading, just outside London.