Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes , for all their fame and fortune, were never your typical
Hollywood couple.
Today, we’re looking into the British film royalty and how tragedy cemented their relationship.
Of course, we’ll get into Leonardo DiCaprio’s involvement in their divorce and how Kate’s
saving Sir Richard Branson’s 90-year-old mother led her to her new love.
It was business before it was a pleasure.
Sam met the Academy Award-winning actor in 2001 when he approached her about acting in
a play, where he was an artistic director.
Though Kate knew her schedule wouldn’t accommodate the play, “You’re not going to say ‘no’
to meeting with Sam Mendes, are ya now?”
The actor told Vanity Fair that while she “didn’t want to do the plays,” she “definitely
wanted to get Mendes’s phone number.”
Winslet’s friend and former co-star Emma Thompson ultimately played cupid when she
invited both of them over for a barbecue.
At the time, Winslet was still married to filmmaker Jim Threapleton, with whom she shares
a daughter, Mia.
However, their three-year relationship ended that same year, and two months later, Sam
and Kate began dating.
Of course, it led to lots of tabloid speculation that there was some overlap between the relationships.
The Mare of Easttown star wasn’t surprised by the media’s narrative.
“We knew that they would say we had been having an affair,” she said back in 2004.
“We weren’t stupid.
Though, of course, it wasn’t true.”
After around two years together, Winslet and Mendes eloped.
They married spontaneously in the presence of three friends on a Caribbean Island.
At the time, she was two months pregnant with the couple’s only child, a son, Joe.
“We hadn’t been planning to do it,” Winslet revealed.
“But we thought it was rather a good idea, so we just did it.”
During their marriage, Kate and Sam refused to fly together because they feared the prospect
of leaving their children orphaned.
According to the couple’s spokesman: “It is not always possible but, for obvious reasons
regarding the children, they do travel separately when they can.”
While some might find this fear irrational or unwarranted, Winslet and Mendes decided
such precautions were necessary after they each came close to death in the early 2000s.
According to a friend, Mendes narrowly dodged death on September 11th, as he was initially
booked on the ill-fated American Airlines flight 77.
Shaken, his first instinct was to call Winslet, and he credited that day with transforming
their then-friendship into “something deeper.”
Kate reportedly had her own brush with tragedy the following month, when she and daughter
Mia flew from London to Dallas.
An alleged terrorist stood up and screamed, “We are all going to die.”
The pilot made an emergency landing in Toronto, where the suspect was arrested and charged
with creating mischief, endangering life, and uttering threats.
The experience inspired Winslet to reassess her life.
Winslet and Mendes shared the same beliefs, as they both realised the value of giving
their kids a “normal” childhood.
Despite being regarded as the power couple of British film, they generally appeared keen
to preserve a sense of normality behind closed doors.
“As a family, we do normal things that other families would,” Winslet said.
“We go to the park, kick a ball around, go to a museum, watch a movie together or
just hang out at home playing Monopoly.”
Kate and Sam appeared to be the ultimate pair for quite a while.
We mean, these two were literally born in the same hospital!
And it takes a very special thing to withstand a partner having simulated sex with Leonardo
DiCaprio.
In 2008, the American Beauty director cast his wife opposite her Titanic co-star and
close friend in the domestic drama Revolutionary Road.
According to those close to the couple, their project likely led to the duo’s demise.
Ironically, tensions began to flare between them, sources said, as Winslet and Mendes
worked to bring the film about a rocky marriage to life on-screen.
Mendes would direct DiCaprio and Winslet’s sex scenes from a different room, shouting
from around the corner, “Leo, don’t bang her head so hard against the kitchen cabinets!”;
“Could you not do it for so long this time?”
DiCaprio would respond with follow-ups: “Like how long?” and he’d counter, “About
45 seconds,” to which the actor would push further.
“Really?
Only 45 seconds?”
“I chose to ignore the obvious inference,” Mendes recalled.
“I said: What’s wrong with 45 seconds?
That’s a long time.
Anyone would be lucky….”
Winslet had a more visceral reaction to the scenes, noting it was awkward being directed
by her husband — especially when it came to the love scenes.
“I had a total meltdown,” Winslet said of the experience.
“Sam was there lining the scene up.
I’d get things like, ‘Press your hands into his back!
No, his back!’
You just have to deal with it.”
But it was too weird for her.
Though Mendes and Winslet announced their divorce about a year after the film was released,
the experience also appeared to bring them closer.
Sam was happily surprised to see “how much fun” Winslet was on set.
“She’s very warm with the crew, a very good company leader, and I found myself actually
a bit in awe of that sometimes,” he said.
The director was relieved that it was better than he had hoped and that they didn’t have
any major issues.
“Put it this way, if you spend 14 hours-a-day staging enormous fights between a married
couple, the last thing you’re going to do when you go home with your wife is to have
a row.”
However, this bond was not enough to keep the couple together for the long haul.
In March 2010, the pair revealed they’d separated earlier that same year.
The closing credits were confirmed in a brief statement from their lawyer.
“Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year,” the couple’s
legal counsel said.
“The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement.
Both parties are fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children.”
Shortly after the two announced their separation, rumours about Mendes’ possible affair with
actress Rebecca Hall came to light.
While the director said such claims were “utter nonsense,” sources said Winslet was “upset”
when she learned about her husband’s indiscretion.
“They then had this big talk, and he told her, ‘people can’t be inspired by just
one relationship.
For me, it’s never going to be about one relationship...
life is a series of relationships,’” a source said.
“Kate told him ‘, For me it is, that’s what I want,’ but Sam replied, ‘Well,
that’s not what I want, and they both knew the marriage could not go on.
It was hopeless.”
People reported a less dramatic end — the couple “just grew apart” and suffered
from his “workaholic” tendencies.
Meanwhile, a source told Us that it was Winslet’s career that got in the way of their marriage,
which ended when she agreed to shoot an HBO miniseries, Mildred Pierce, in New York even
though he wanted to stay in London.
A year later, Winslet told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. that she refused to “shit-fling”
when it came to her ex.
“One thing I will say about me and Sam is that it’s fine, it’s really fine,” she
insisted.
At the end of the day, they are grown-ups, and however hard it’s been for her, it’s
been equally hard for him.
“And we have a child together who we both love — and raising him together, jointly
and without any conflict, is absolutely key.”
Divorce aside, Mendes had Winslet’s back when she came under attack in 2013.
A U.K. fathers’ rights group came for Kate after she told Vogue that her kids don’t
go back and forth.
None of this 50/50 time with the mums and dads — her children live with her.
Fathers4Justice then launched an ad featuring her face accompanied by the words, “Kate,
every child deserves their father this Christmas.”
Mendes reportedly fought back against the group, stating, “It is inappropriate for
this organisation to involve my family and I when they know nothing of our personal circumstances.
Whilst I fully support fathers’ rights, I can happily state this has never been a
concern for me or my son.”
In 2015, Winslet said she prided herself on withholding details about her divorces with
the public.
“No one really knows why my first marriage didn’t last; no one knows why my second
didn’t,” she said.
“And I’m proud of those silences.”
In the years since their divorce, both Kate and Sam found love in the arms of other people.
Mendes met and married musician Alison Balsom . They wed in January 2017 and welcomed a
daughter together later that year.
Winslet met her current husband unexpectedly while escaping a house fire on vacation at
Sir Richard Branson’s luxury villa on Necker Island.
Commonly known as Ned Rocknroll, Winslet met Branson’s nephew Edward Abel Smith after
she saved Branson’s 90-year-old mother.
Kate Winslet's character in Titanic barely survived an iceberg, and now she rescued Eve
from the blaze that chased 20 houseguests out into the elements during Hurricane Irene.
“She was great.
She swept her up into her arms and got them out of the house as fast as possible,” Branson
said.
While Winslet had a boyfriend at the time, her bond with Smith — the head of marketing
promotion and astronaut experience at Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic — grew quickly,
and the two married in 2012.
They welcomed son Bear Blaze in late 2013.
“Thank God for Ned — really,” Winslet once said.
“He’s just so incredibly supportive, and he’s so much fun.
He’s absolutely everything to me.
And to all of us.”
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