Can Kate Winslet stage-manage the perfect divorce... again?

By Alison Boshoff

Broadening her horizons: Kate Winslet films an advert in Rome as she focuses on new projects after her split from Sam Mendes


Late afternoon in Chelsea, New York, and a scruffy-looking man, prematurely greying and carrying bundles of scripts, hurries from an apartment block. Accompanied by a two female assistants, he leaves in a black car.

Not more than three minutes later, his estranged wife arrives, driving herself in an Audi. With her blonde hair in a pony-tail, she passes unnoticed into the building.

The woman is Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet, and the man she has so neatly avoided is her soon-to-be ex-husband, Sam Mendes.

Day after day, they repeat this pattern. Their timing is so impeccable that it's clear their entrances and exits are being stage-managed. Indeed, although they continue to share parenting duties to children Mia and Joe, and each have apartments in the same block, they pretty much manage to avoid seeing each other at all.

When the end of their marriage was announced in March, the two of them were, again, quite deliberately nowhere near each other. Kate was on a break-up holiday with her close friend Emma Thompson and the children in Mexico.

Sam, meanwhile, was spotted dining with an attractive female companion on Los Angeles. So, five months on, what are they both doing? And, as rumours of new romantic interests swirl, what is the truth about the end of their marriage?

Kate, who was pictured yesterday looking youthful and fresh-faced as she filmed an advert in Italy, is planning a career reinvention.

Later this year, she will be making a big-budget romantic comedy which could see her break out of her niche as a serious Oscar-winning actress and into a more lucrative bracket as America's Sweetheart.

She is also doing television work - again higher profile and lower brow. And almost ever since returning from Mexico, Kate has been working in New York on a TV adaptation of the James M. Cain depression era novel Mildred Pierce.


Rolling back the years: Kate looks slim and fresh-faced as she films in Italy


Expectations are high for the project, and magazine Entertainment Weekly said: 'Just give her the Emmy now!'

Daily, she has left the three-bedroom apartment overlooking the Hudson river which was the marital home, early in the morning, and been driven to film in various locations, mainly Glen Cove on Long Island, around an hour away.

The novel is set in Los Angeles, but director Todd Haynes has agreed to film near New York so that Kate can spend time with her children.

Sam Mendes, most famous as the director of American Beauty, has waited for her to leave before entering the building to take Mia, nine (Kate's daughter by first husband, Jim Threapleton) and their son, Joe, six, to school each day.

They attend a private primary school in Greenwich Village half a mile away and tend to walk there. Kate, generally, is there to pick them up in the afternoons - which is when Sam leaves his apartment, which he uses as his office.

When they first split, he was living there, but now he has rented a new place in the city. But why are they taking such care not to see each other?

Local gossips are convinced Sam has at least one new romantic relationship on the go. The stunning, cerebral brunette, British actress Rebecca Hall, with whom he was linked earlier this year, insists that it is not her.


Looking for love again: The actress plans to star in some romantic comedies as part of her career reinvention


The two spent a lot of time together while working on a play, and Kate was said to have tired of his closeness to Ms Hall.

It was even reported last month that Rebecca and Sam were on the point of 'going public' with their romance.

Rebecca demurs, however. 'I did not have sexual relations,' she told an interviewer last week. 'It's the weirdest thing and it's all a load of *******s. He's a good mate.'

One Los-Angeles-based friend tells me that he's seen Sam out and about with a blonde - who is not Kate. While another says: 'If I did know about a new romance, I would not tell you,' which rather makes you think that he has moved on.

How about Shakespearean actress Juliet Rylance, whose name was also linked with Sam's in the spring? Her husband, actor Christian Camargo, thinks not. Said Camargo, who lives in New York with his wife: 'It's absolute gossip.' Not her, then.

However it would surprise no one if there was a new woman, as Mendes has a reputation as a true ladies' man - he was once described as the commitment-phobe's commitment-phobe.

He astonished his friends by getting wed in the first place, having spent years avoiding matrimony. 'I don't believe in marriage,' he told an interviewer. 'People from broken homes just don't buy it. The idea of a marriage fills me with dread.'

He added only last year that the greatest 'risk' he had ever taken was getting married and having children.

As for Kate, she seems to be focused only on work and on keeping the ship steady for the sake of the children. To her credit, she remains a hands-on mum. Filming had to be halted in May when Kate was struck in the face by a basketball while playing with the children outside her trailer.


Avoiding each other: Kate and Sam Mendes don't cross paths when they share child-care


She suffered bruising which could not be adequately disguised by make-up. There will be more family time this summer.

Mendes will be at a slightly loose end as the Bond movie he was to have directed has been postponed owing to budget problems. He is going to spend a few weeks in Gloucestershire with the children at the Grade II listed property which he and Kate spent a fortune on in the early years of their marriage.

Ironically, it is only now ready to be used after a £1.5 million programme of refurbishment. Kate will also spend a few weeks there with the children, and she and Sam will coincide for a couple of days of handover.

Both have family nearby: Sam's mum lives in Reading, as do Kate's parents and two sisters. The two will not, contrary to reports last weekend, be trying to put their marriage back together while on holiday in Britain.

Both acknowledge it is well past the point of repair. Indeed, Kate was upset by inaccurate reports of their intentions, as she worries that the children might read what has been written and gain some false hope that their parents are about to reunite.

A long-standing friend of the pair tells me: 'The relationship is not going in the direction of a reunion at all, in fact it's quite the opposite.

'They are trying to deal with the break-up with dignity as privately as they can.

They remain committed to the children and will be spending a limited amount of time together this holiday when one is dropping the children off, and so on, but that is all.

'To be crystal clear, there is no reunion, and there's no chance of a reunion.'


'Perfect divorce': There was no wrangling over money or property when Kate and her first husband Jim Threapleton separated


Another associate is less categorical, but says: 'Kate has gone very quiet as she has been so busy, but she never mentions getting back together with Sam, or the possibility of it.'

The legal aspects of the divorce are said to be advancing, and it seems Kate Winslet will have shed a second husband by the age of 34. She seems to be hoping to repeat the 'perfect divorce' from Jim Threapleton, which saw no wrangling over money or property, and a confidentiality agreement on both sides to prevent any washing of dirty linen in public.

Over the coming months, Sam will be spending more time in the UK as he works on the Old Vic productions of The Tempest and As You Like It - part of the Bridge Project which unites theatrical talents from both sides of the pond.

Kate is also returning to the professional fray. She took time off to be with the children when Joe was small, and also barely worked as she attempted to nurse her ailing marriage.

Now that it has failed, she is back as never before. Her next film is an adaptation of the hit chick-lit novel Which Brings Me To You - a book filled with letters from two would-be lovers to each other.

The characters are both in their late 20s and toying with the idea of settling down. It says something for her confidence that she is happy to 'play young'.

Her co-star will be Bradley Cooper, who has quite a reputation as a ladykiller. He dated Jennifer Aniston after meeting her on the set of He's Just Not That Into You and then ditched her for Renee Zellweger, with whom he now lives.

People who know Kate say she is feeling positive and happy about life, hence her bold new direction. And she is glad she and Sam have sorted out a way to parent the children without living in each other's pockets.

As she said: 'I can take any s*** you can fling at me. I come from a long line of real carthorses. Very stoic, insides-made-of-iron people.'

But lucky for Kate, her divorce is working out to be rather smoother than anyone could have expected.

Additional reporting: Annette Witheridge in New York.

source: dailymail