Kate Winslet splits from husband Sam Mendes!

British actress Kate Winslet splits from husband
By Raphael G. Satter

LONDON – British movie star Kate Winslet has split from her film director husband Sam Mendes after nearly seven years of marriage, their British law firm said Monday.

With their matching Oscars and string of high-profile commercial and artistic successes, Winslet and Mendes were a golden couple of Britain's show business world.

But the surprise announcement, sent in an e-mail to journalists, said they had been separated since the beginning of the year without specifying an exact date.

Law firm Schillings said the split was "entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement."

Winslet, 34, married Mendes, 44, in a small, low-key ceremony in the Caribbean in May 2003. It was Winslet's second marriage. Her first, to British director Jim Threapleton, ended in divorce in 2001.

Winslet has one child from her marriage with Threapleton and another from her marriage with Mendes. The statement said both she and Mendes were "fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children."

It wasn't clear whether divorce proceedings have begun. Calls and e-mails seeking comment from Schillings weren't immediately returned.

Winslet's breakthrough role was in Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures," which traced the obsessive relationship between two girls in 1950s New Zealand.

She went on to run through a number of other stage and film roles — including a memorable turn as Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of "Hamlet" — but stardom would not come until James Cameron's "Titantic," one of the most commercially successful films in cinematic history.

The film would earn Winslet one of many Academy Award nominations, but her first win would not come until 2009, when she scooped the prize for best actress for her role in "The Reader."

Mendes, an acclaimed stage and film director, won the coveted best director Oscar for "American Beauty."

He directed his wife in "Revolutionary Road," a recent film about a crumbling marriage that reunited Winslet with her "Titanic" co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.

Reviews were largely favorable, but the film failed to set off the same box office fever that made "Titanic" one of the most successful films in history.

In "Revolutionary Road," Winslet portrayed a suburban housewife who became increasingly bored and desperate with her stay-at-home life. The film won Winslet a Golden Globe for best dramatic actress, and in her acceptance speech she thanked her husband for pushing her so hard.

"Thank you for directing this film, babe, and thank you for killing us every single day and really enjoying us actually being in such horrific pain," she said last year.

Mendes said at the time that directing his wife had been one of the best experiences of his life, although he said she liked to discuss the movie 24 hours a day while he preferred to do something else, like watch a baseball game, at night when work was done.