Sam Mendes representative announced on 15 March 2010 that "they separated earlier this year". The couple were divorced in 2011. Mendes married trumpeter Alison Balsom in January 2017, their daughter Phoebe Mendes was born in September 2017. 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
Motifs in the James Bond film series Smith's "Writing's on the Wall" eventually winning the award. With the exception of the first two Daniel Craig films, "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace", every Bond film has a sequence in which Bond interacts with Miss Moneypenny, the personal assistant to M, Bond's superior. Lois Maxwell was the first to portray Moneypenny and did so for fourteen Eon-produced Bond films from "Dr. No" in 1962 to "A View to a Kill" in 1985 opposite Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. She was followed by Caroline Bliss, Samantha Bond and Naomie Harris, who played opposite Dalton, Brosnan and Craig respectively. The four