Sam Mendes Sam Mendes Samuel Alexander Mendes (born 1 August 1965) is an English stage and film director best known for directing the drama film "American Beauty" (1999), which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the crime film "Road to Perdition" (2002), and the "James Bond" films "Skyfall" (2012) and "Spectre" (2015). He also is known for dark re-inventions of the stage musicals "Cabaret" (1994), "Oliver!" (1994), "Company" (1995), and "" (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2013). In 2000 Mendes was appointed
Sérgio Mendes the "Confetti" album, which had the hit songs "Olympia", which was also used as a theme song for the Olympic games that year and "Alibis". The '80s also found Mendes working with singer Lani Hall again on the song "No Place to Hide" from the "Brasil '86" album, and as producer of her vocals on the title song for the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again". By the time Mendes released his Grammy-winning Elektra album "Brasileiro" in 1992, he was the undisputed master of pop-inflected Brazilian jazz. The late-1990s lounge music revival brought retrospection and respect to Mendes' oeuvre,