I know most people won’t give a crap about this story, but I’m feeling a moment of gossip vindication! In March of 2010, Kate Winslet and her director husband/baby-daddy Sam Mendes announced their split. At first, sources were mealy-mouthed about the “reasons” for the split – stuff about how Sam and Kate’s marriage suffered after they worked together, and that Sam was “bored” in the marriage, blah, blah, blah. And then some of the British tabloids began saying that The Real Reason was Sam’s ongoing friendship/relationship with Rebecca Hall, a young actress who is probably best known to American audiences for her part in The Town. Here’s a photo of Hall:
Sam and Rebecca were working together when Sam and Kate Winslet broke up, and there were rumors of an affair. Rumors that Rebecca offered a non-denial denial for when they came up during The Town’s promotion. Time passed and I didn’t really hear anything, so I kind of thought my initial instinct – that Winslet left her philandering husband – was not on target. But it was on target. Rebecca and Sam have been seeing each other this whole time:
She’s the beautiful English actress who was blamed for the breakdown of Kate Winslet’s marriage to film director Sam Mendes. Now, 18 months after being implicated as the ‘other woman’, it has been revealed that Rebecca Hall, daughter of veteran theatre director Sir Peter Hall, is dating the Oscar-winning film director.
A spokesman for Mendes last night confirmed he was romantically involved with Miss Hall, 29, saying: ‘It’s true they are in a relationship.’
A source close to the star added: ‘They are dating and have been for some time. I can’t put an exact date on it, but certainly nothing happened until after Sam’s marriage was over.’
The couple are believed to be spending time together in London where Mendes, 46, is directing the new James Bond film Skyfall. News of their relationship comes 18 months after Miss Hall was blamed for the collapse of Mendes’ six-year marriage to Titanic actress Miss Winslet.
At the time it was claimed Miss Winslet ended the marriage after growing tired of her husband’s closeness to Cambridge-educated Miss Hall, whose father Sir Peter founded the Royal Shakespeare Company. But sources close to Mendes, who has an eight-year-old son Joe with his ex-wife, insisted the couple were nothing more than friends.
Miss Hall first met Mendes – who won an Oscar for his 1999 debut film American Beauty – on the set of her film, Starter For 10, where he was executive producer. He later cast her in two of his plays, a move that was said to have infuriated Miss Winslet. A spokesman for Miss Hall was unavailable for comment.
Shady. Totally shady. Of course, it’s totally possible that Sam and Rebecca were “just friends” while Sam was a married man and that once he found himself single, his relationship with Rebecca progressed romantically. But in my mind, it’s far more likely that Sam was either having an emotional or physical affair with Hall, and Kate simply had enough. I’m also saying the “affair” possibility is more likely because Hall looks so much like Rachel Weisz, who Sam was dating before Kate (Kate reportedly “stole” Sam from Weisz).
Photos courtesy of WENN.
many “alleged” in this story!
and it’s funny that Kate Winslet had 2 boyfriends since her divorce whereas her ex-husband has an alleged affair with a friend
Same brain, Carrie. Winslet was seen out and about with some hot guy about a week after the split.
Man, those are some UGLY shoes she’s wearing in the last photo. Very unflattering.
But Mendes had obviously his affair before Winslet started to go out with other men. There are Mendes/Hall rumours since two years.
and Kate Winslet’s boyfriend NedRock’n Roll always is married even if separated of his wife
DOWNGRADE, Sam. Downgrade.
Eh, I don’t know. Between the face tweaking and lying about her c-section and the increasingly desperate way she’s dressing, I could see where Kate would be really hard to live with.
She lied about having a c-section?
Yes, she had a c-section with one of the kids (can’t remember which), but initially said it was a natural birth. A few years later she “confessed” that she’d had an unplanned c-section, but felt like a failure for doing so, and therefore lied about it.
She did a lot of interviews in the UK media when pregnant, talking about how she wasn’t scared because “it’s what us girls are designed to do!” and how her aromatherapist masseuse and acupuncturist (? I think it was) would be with her, and how she had child-bearing hips. She was pretty young, and they do sell the natural birth ideal HARD over here, so most older women I know snickered a little and said, heh, she’ll soon learn. In fact I remember women journalists with kids chortling in print to that effect. But I do see how she could have felt humiliated and stupid enough to lie about it afterwards, in context, and actually a lot of Brit women who really wanted natural births get very upset indeed about a crash section. I dunno; part of me also thinks if journalists/the public think they’ve a right to ask someone such personal medical questions, then the actor has the right to lie. It really is none of our business. I mean, journalists have actually asked Keanu Reeves how he felt about his girlfriend and their baby dying. Seems to me people want to know stuff, and confuse it with having a right to.
Not a massive fan of Winslet’s, either. I just think the birth stuff was understandable. She’d dug herself a hole.
@Lalala:On the contrary I think he’s bounced back quite nicely.
Both women are classically beautiful. There’s no downgrading. If in fact they are really together Rebecca will be starring in one of his movies.
That DRESS – hideous!
I was really surprised that Kate W. and Sam Mendes broke up. They just looked so rational and dull, but of course looks mean nothing.
wow!!
Sounds all kinds of shady. Also her shoes in that last pick make me so sad because they are so awful.
They’re the fugliest shoes I’ve ever seen. There’s not a single good thing about those monstrosities.
And Mendes is now directing the next Bond film with Daniel Craig who married Rachel Weisz who used to date Mendes.
It truly is a small, nepotistic world in H-Weird, isn’t it?
LOL. That is weird.
Mendes also knows Daniel from before, he directed him in Road to Perdition.
I think everyone lives in open relationships in those circles. It would explain why they all date within the same group of people and have no problems with it.
I think the winner in this unholy mess is Rachel Weisz.
Isn’t the man who Kate W is dating married?
Glad to see that the British film industry is incestuous and in-bred like it’s Hollywood version.
I was going to write that Kate got a little of “what comes around goes around,” but then I realized that every person in this equation would have to have the same thing written, so I just gave up.
I think Winslet looks more like Weisz than Hall. I always thought that Kate and Rachel should play sisters.
All three look pretty similar, actually. They have similar facial features (prominent lips and cheeks) and coloring, and they’re curvy-ish rather than Hollywood-emaciated. Apparently Sam has a type.
its a bit of a strectch to call rachel Weisz is curvy isnt it?!
also i dont think that hall looks anything like Rachel apart from that they both have long hair!!
agree about the shoes- theyre gross..
I was about to write the exact same comment, Jules. Winslet and Weisz could be sisters. This Hall girl is just…meh. Meh with bad style.
makes sense. i could never understand why he was with kate. he seems so bright and interesting. i like kate, but she seems more suited to guy who changes his name to ‘rock n roll’, or whatever it is.
Honestly I don’t know what it is..but your comment made me laugh out loud..
I’m still doing it now.. 🙂
I felt totally bad when I read this story because I love Winslet as an actress (the Polanski thing ruins though) BUT then I thought she is used to cheating too so now I’m more like “karma’s a bitch”.
Ditto. I was just watching “Quills” again last night. She was spectacular. So realized the architect is played by Stephen Moyer from “Trueblood.”
On what planet does Hall look anything like Weisz? Aside from the dark hair I don’t see any resemblance. Rachel Weisz is quite stunning whereas Hall… MEH
Exactly! I was scrolling down reading the comments, about to comment myself about the comparison of this woman (Hall) & Weisz?! I just don’t see it at all. Nothing. Zip. Two totally different-looking people to me.
Anyway, yeah, it sounds like a bunch of actors hormones in overdrive. Everybody’s screwing everybody. Ewwww.
This woman looks like Weisz? I don’t see it either.
Yeah, in what world that girl looks like Rachel Weisz??
Thank you for telling the truth!
I agree, the comparisons on this site are shocking at times and this is one of those times. Weisz and Hall do not look anything alike.
So that explains the bad cosmetic work she had done. Her face is still wonky from the alleged mid-face lift that I think she had.
Rebecca Hall is British theatre royalty. Her father, Peter Hall, was the director who ran the Royal National Theatre after Laurence Olivier retired, and moved it to this big purpose built complex, and is this colossus of the British stage. You cannot overstate his power in that world. Her mother is an opera singer, Maria Ewing. Her father has been married 4 times (his first wife was Leslie Caron) and he’s left every wife for the next, so it probably seems pretty normal to his kids.
Given Sam Mendes is in the British theatre world way more than the Hollywood movie one, I think her pedigree is interesting. I mean, when Mendes was a student, Peter Hall was basically God to anyone who loved the theatre. A God whose best friends were the top actors, writers, directors, movie stars and opera singers of the time. His diaries were a best seller. Rebecca Hall also had her first six jobs or so given to her by her father, on TV and stage, so he isn’t above nepotism in the slightest and plainly dotes on her. I’m sure she’s talented and I know nothing to indicate she’s not a nice person (and Winslet blatantly overlapped her first and second husbands anyway as well as sounding like hard work in general, so I am not in her corner particularly either, except that nobody should be cheated on, especially with little kids) but I do think Mendes is sketchy. His relationships have all been with beautiful young actresses with seriously useful career trajectories and/or contacts. And how a man who looks like that has them falling over themselves for him, I don’t know.
Funnily enough, when KW was younger and RW was younger I think they looked very alike, despute the colouring difference. Similar mouths, jawlines and eye shapes. I don’t think Hall looks like either, really, other than dark hair.
I’ve always thought Mendes was good looking. Buuuut, I do think he also must have crazy game to be landing all THESE ladies.
Ugh, these actresses and their ugly director partners. Is it worth it just for a guaranteed job? These women don’t need to do this. Mendes seems sketchy to me–he ‘s probably been crushing on Hall since 1999, or in other words when she was 17!
Winslet’s first husband cheated on her and gave her a STD. She had every reason to dump him.
I’d not heard that – not pleasant if true, no, and certainly more than grounds for dumping. I always figured that was the kind of early-20s relationship most of us have and don’t marry, but her cash meant the usual constraints weren’t there.
Sometimes, people write so refined. You are one of those. *Claps*
Aww, thank you! I think mostly I’m just longwinded. 😉
R. Hall was also in Frost/Nixon and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
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AWESOME COMMENT, KL!! You hit all the bullets points and then some, but managed to have an ‘ooh, I know this’ moment without coming as pedantic as I do in those rare instances when I know what the heck I’m talking about.
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What number wife is Sneaky Pete up to? Four?
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Back in the day, I did a bunch of research on an opera that got Hall’s mother loads of critical praise and (in those circles) she was one of a cast that still considered to be legendary of Francis Poulenc’s opera The Dialogues Of The Carmelites (The Met, 1987). You can see some clips of Maria Ewing from that production on YouTube performing in one of her most-beloved role. Apart from the music being beautiful (and for my money, having the greatest finale in all of opera history, not that my opinion means shit), you can totally see where Rebecca Hall gets her mouth. Let’s hope the entire clan puts them to good use.
Please Rebecca Hall dreams she looks like Rachel Weisz!!!
Sam did a great job on American Beauty – he is very talented.
If anybody wants somebody who looks like Rachel Weisz (who, as far as looks go, ended up with the hotter man — Daniel Craig), it’s Eva Green. Different nose, but much more of a resemblance to Weisz than freaking Rebecca Hall, whom I find completely uninteresting.
Daniel had great chemistry with Eva Green in Casino Royale and she really resembles Rachel. Also interesting is that all three of them are water signs in horoscope and they are very much drawn to each other. It would explain the chemistry on and off screen. Daniel and Rachel are both Pisces and Eva is Cancer.
Wasn’t she allegedly sleeping with Affleck on The Town?
I remember someone on here saying they thought Ben was really sleeping with her and not Blake. I buy it, because she is totally Ben’s type.
there were so many rumors or blind items on THE TOWN filming (like for January Jones’s baby dad)
That’s too bad if it’s true, I’m a fan of Hall.
Weisz to Winslet to Hall, damn. Sam Mendes may be a (alleged)cheating scumbag but I kind of admire his taste in women, I love all three actresses!
An Oscar for American Beauty? I must be the only one who hated that movie.
I think Hall kind of looks like Liv Tyler.
NO you are not he only one that hated that movie. Makes me cringe just thinking about it winning the Oscar. Yet another mistake that can’t be fixed.
Horrible horrible film.
and notice that is does not play on TV at all. Ugh..
I skipped the Oscars the following year in protest. Nobody cared, but I felt a sense of righteous indignation in doing so..
sometimes we have to take a stand.
I hated it too. I don’t think I’ve seen any of his other films (checking IMDB). I saw Road to Perdition because my mom is a huge Tom Hanks fan and dragged me. It was OK.
He makes movies my puny California brain can’t get (or to be honest doesn’t want to. It prefers books).
Oh dear, he’s making the next Bond. This should be interesting.
Am joining the Amen chorus on this one. I despise all of Sam Mendes’ movies. They’re all a vapid mix of Brit-worshipping-America and cynicism-lite.
I hear his production of Cabaret (as if he could top Bob Fosse) sucks hard, too. He’s got chicks with tattoos in it, oooh.
Sam Mendes’ whole career is desperation to belong to an élite circle of theatre and film auteurs. He used his star girlfriends to be more noticeable in Hollywood, and this Rebecca Hall courtship is a desperate bid to lay claim to Peter Hall’s theatre credibility/posterity in England.
We can all start guessing what daft young actress he’ll be cheating with on Rebecca Hall in a few years. Remember she did that amazing photo shoot with Jon Hamm? You’d think that would give you higher standards.
I have found my family: LONELY NO MORE!
thank you..I also hate this film. Spacey has given me the creeps ever since.
Definitely an upgrade for the ever handsome Sam Mendes. He should have dropped Winslut, when she was openly pinning for DiCaprio’s man-meat in Golden Globes.
Hall is an upgrade? I don’t even find Winslet attractive and she always strikes me as pretentious. But I don’t see where a Rebecca Hall despite big roles in Vicky Christina Barcelona and The Town manages to be still irrelevant is an upgrade. She obviously is together with 17 year older Mendes because she knows she need him to make career. She isn’t good looking enough and also don’t have charisma to have a career by her own.
When it comes to Rebecca Hall and how incestous and uptradey the British Theatre Industry is, which is way too too too much compared to Hollywood, you can see HER attraction to someone like Sam mendes vis a vis Rebecca’s father. Sam Mendes comes from the theatre, and has said it is his love over film.
mine is not so much a comment on her, but a comment on him. So despite her very limited CV, she is Brit Industry royalty,Suri Cruise [or any of Speilberg kids/god kids,but in a smaller pond, if you will.
It’s interesting that the same dynamic played out in reverse with Kate W and Sam Mendes ie despite Titanic, She wasn’t really making prestige pictures with Hollywood big wigs, and as soon as she hooked up with him, her image, films etc went through the strathosphere because suddenly she’s sitting at the table with top hollywood players who are his close work BFFs. There was only so much her BFF Emma Thompson could do for her.
When Winslet and Mendes came together she had already Titanic and Sense and Sensibility and when he came together with Weisz she had The Mummy but Rebecca Hall has no hit movie where she plays the lead by her own. And they probably don’t care in America if her father was at the theatre in UK an influential person. She clearly sleeps her way up on the back. Let’s face it which movie role without support can play a Rebecca Hall she isn’t cute, sexy, a femme fatale or even much attractive. I don’t want to say she ugly but she hasn’t a remarkable or memorable face.
In 2000 was Sam Mendes considered one of the best directors of his generation and where is he now. He does a Bond movie. When people nowadays talk about the best directors of our time they talk about Nolan, Fincher, Scorsese, Aronofsky and Eastwood.
@josie, i think you both miss and get my point. Mendes has talked alot about his love for theatre, and his continued role in it. Whether it’s west end or Broadway, he continues to be involved in it to the detriment of his film career. Peter Hall AKA Rebecca’s father is the BIG BOSS in that world, and as someone said earlier, he is not above nepotism since he gave his own daughter the first 6 or more jobs in TV, Theatre.
That is not to say that Mendes doesn’t have pull, but hers (via her father)is better, in that world.
As for their respective film careers, she has very limited CV, but he is doing more theatre than film, so it evens out.
Going back to 2000, inspite of KW having been in TITANIC and SENSE AND SESIBILITY, her films were not making BO. HIDEOUS KINKY anyone? Mendes was a very well respected theatre director who was sought out to direct AMERICAN BEAUTY by Speilberg,doing such a spectacular job of that and his next project that he went straight to the top of the Hollywood foodchain. So when they met,HE was very much the guy with the connections, even though she’d been in the game longer and received a certain amount of acclaim. And if you look at the films she has made whilst with him, they are very stagey which is his hallmark. This includes films he has not directed. The producers behind those projects are inevitably his producers. That is why i say that Mendes connection definitely helped her, just as Rebecca connection is helpful to him.
What does Rebecca get out of it, the double whammy of jobs from Daddy and BF.
But maybe i am just a cynic and it’s love all round.
Sorry Lak. You overestimate Rebecca Hall and her daddy connection. I don’t think she has that much power in the MOVIE INDUSTRY and she definitely need Mendes more as he her. Talent and lookswise I bet she makes more a Emily Mortimer career as a Kate Winslet or even Rachel Weisz career.
I can see why he would have a great need of her.
The rarified air that Peter Hall occupies is one that does not hold Hollywood in the regards if it exists in and of itself without a strong classical career to accompany it. Anyone who is known to say ‘The Bard’ isn’t looking to extend the arm without a reason. If Mendes wants to swim in that pool where too much Hollywood and competition hurt him, he needs an ‘in’, as it were. Most enjoyable means to an end I’ve ever heard.
I shouldn’t laugh at your nickname for Winslet…but I am.
I like Kate Winslet better with red hair, like she had in Titanic
Me too! I always wonder why she doesn’t do that again. She looks weird lately with her blond futuristic poofie-do.
LOVED her with red hair but I don’t think it would look good on her now. I’m sure she’d look older with it.
Yikes! Seriously, who dressed her in that??
High heeled-thong-gladiator-sandals – now that is shady.
Now see, I remember her as Christian Bale’s wife in The Prestige. And I love The Town. But her performance in The Prestige really cemented her in my mind.
I liked her in Please Give.
Co-sign your comment. She’s a good actress but I think Winslet is too.
The whole scene of the film industry at times screams of nepotism and and who you know, not what or how you do.
Vicki Christina Barcelona was pretty memorable!
well i guess in this case the old adage, the way you get him is the way you lose him, is true.
i love winslet as an actress but there’s just something about her as a person that seems off.
As long as y’all are equally pissed with Jennifer Aniston for doing the same thing.
I really hope Rebecca leaves him, she’s too talented to be caught up in this tabloid crap. Is Sam great in bed? Why is it that beautiful women keep going after him? First he’s with Rachel (Lord knows who came before her) and then Kate “steals him” and then Rebecca does the same to Kate. Like WTF? It’s a cycle that he just allows to happen. To me he sounds like a sleaze. You don’t leave a marriage because you’re bored, you learn how to spice it up. What a moron.
That’s what I said before seeing your post. He has a pattern. If she doesn’t dump him, she will be replaced by another 29 year old in 5-6 years.
I’ve met them both, separately, albeit a long time ago (well before they hooked up). He is very charming, very smart, well spoken etc. She is also charming but very intense and gives the impression that she’d be very emotional and highly strung. I wonder if they were just too different. Rebecca sounds more intellectual than Kate (who never went to university and dropped out of school early) and maybe she and Sam have more of a meeting of minds. I got the impression that being married to Kate could be a little exhausting.
i get exhausted just watching kate give an acceptance speech.
Oh, yes Rebecca Hall needs to date the old and ugly Mendes to improve her career! Poor girl! She is far from the great Kate Winslet!
Who the hell thinks Sam Mendes is attractive?
Sam Mendes has not been attractive for a long, long time but he is great for an actress who needs a career boost. His films which are not really my cup of tea are usually very critically acclaimed.
In short, I as a 42 year old woman who is not an actress would not go there. As a 30 year old actress “Sam, baby come here big boy.” Afterall if my acting skills were worth the acclaim, I should be able to fake thinking Sam Mendes is attractive. LOL
Uh… NOT ME. Never have, never will. He’s a bit toady, in my books.
He’s attractive in the flesh, and really charming.
I’d rather be with that hot looking sound guy in the background!
Mendes is not attractive but maybe Rebecca Hall needs a little help from this old dude! Kate Winslet doesn’t need Mendes anymore!
She looks nothing like Rachel Weisz. Total downgrade Sam. Then again leaving Rachel Weisz for Kate was a downgrade.
I see a pattern, he doesn’t do well once his partner has matured and needs to replace her with a 20 something.
You have a point. Rachel Weisz was born in 1970, Winslet in ’75 and now Hall in ’82.
Jane Horrocks was born 1964. They split when she was 30, because she wanted kids and commitment and he didn’t – her words.
I feel like their marriage just went to it’s end by itself. It happens. People fall in love and then in few years they fall out of love and live together just because they are married and have children. Some of them may “date” someone else while their marriage exist only on paper.
I think that both Kate and Sam were happy to split.
What is so shitty about Mendes behavior is that he needed 2 years to come out with his new relationship. In the meantime a lot of people and the press blame Kate Winslet for what happened. How can watch Mendes that the press drag his baby momma’s name through the mud. He has no class and is a loser because he has no guts to take responsibility for his affair instead both Mendes and Hall lied.
So deeply disappointed in the direction Kate has gone. I think she’s close to having fallen off the deep end. RH is meh. Mendes is ok. Mr. Rockandroll, remember is hooked up with the Virgin Empire, anfd I imagine Kate ccould probably write her own ticket after saving Branson’s aunt. (Sorry-typos!)M but she has mislaid what made her classy, she talks way too much, and despite declaring she cares not a whit about her weight, methinks milady doth protest too much. I REALLY wish she’d do some Shakespeare! That would give her a real challenge, an outlet, and a role that matches her incredible intensity. Does anyone see her as the best Lady Macbeth ever?! I sure do!
I don’t think the three of them look like at all. But what do I know.
I think the illusion dress is interesting, I don’t like it. But I wonder if it would look better if the black part was simply a dark red? Maybe the illusion would work then?
I love Rebecca Hall. Beautiful and very talented.
Well, Kate did say that Sam would leave her if she ever had plastic surgery. And their marriage ended shortly after Kate started looking so drastically different. So that’s probably why the marriage ended.
Or was she lying about that? It’s hard to tell because she lies about so many things — having a natural childbirth, her plastic surgery, dressing for “comfort”. Maybe Sam leaving her was just another of her many, many, public lies. Who knows. Either way, he’s better off without her.
Kate is better without the ugly Mendes!
Look, all you ‘full time moms’ need to realize something. Take if from a man who loves women: Rebecca Hall is LIGHT YEARS hotter than Kate and even Rachel Weisz or whatever. This is a WOMAN in her prime, just effortlessly oozing sensuality and attraction. How do I know? She looks just as hot WITHOUT makeup.
Yes, we MEN are quietly judging you. All the time. Especially when we say we are NOT.