I got addicted to theatre and didn't want to recover

Director Sam Mendes, who received our Lebedev Award at the weekend, tells Nick Curtis about making a splash on stage, his latest creative streak, and why he won't run the National Theatre

- Nick Curtis

BEFORE meeting Sam Mendes memorabilia-strewn at the office of his production company Neal Street in Covent Garden, I email him a cutting of our last interview, 31 years ago, in GQ. It shows him on the same street, when he was about to reopen the Donmar Warehouse in 1992. He's done pretty well since, I reckon.

The Donmar became a creative powerhouse during his 12 years in charge: he took Cabaret to New York, directed at the National, RSC, on Broadway and in the West End and set up the transatlantic Bridge Project around an ensemble of British and American stars. Then there's his film career, which started with a Best Picture Oscar for his debut, American Beauty, and embraces two Bond films and more personal projects like 1917 and Empire of Light. On TV he produced Call the Midwife and Penny Dreadful. He was knighted in 2020.

Amid a new creative streak on stage - The Ferryman, The Lehman Trilogy, The Motive and the Cue, plus a new Jez Butterworth play next year - on Sunday he was given the Lebedev Award, which recognises a singular contribution to theatre, at the 67th Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

On stage at the ceremony at Claridge's, Mendes said how grateful he was to "go home tonight with my favourite person", his second wife, classical trumpeter Alison Balsom, with whom he has a six-year-old daughter (he also has a 20-year-old son and a stepdaughter from his first marriage to Kate Winslet). He also paid tribute to his producing partner of over 30 years, Caro Newling, and thanked the theatre community for becoming the family he never had as the only child of divorced parents, living with a mother with mental health problems.