The filmmaker Sam Mendes is to join forces again with his American Beauty artiste Kevin Spacey in a three-year theatre venture. Spacey, Artistic Director of London's Old Vic Theatre has invited Mendes to present a double-bill of classic plays up until 2010 in the British capital and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. In one production, Mendes will direct Stephen Millane as Hamlet in the William Shakespeare tragedy next year. Spacey enthuses, "It has been my hope ever since I became artistic director of the Old Vic that the work we do in London should have an international life, and, particularly, a presence in New York." When asked if Mendes would direct his wife Kate Winslet on the stage, he mused, "I'm about to direct her in a movie so let's see."

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