Director Sam Mendes has been forced to cancel two of his London theatre projects after leading actor Stephen Dillane pulled out of the shows because of an illness in the family. Mendes was due to team up with his American Beauty star, Kevin Spacey, to present the William Shakespeare plays Hamlet and The Tempest at London's Old Vic Theatre next year (08) - where Spacey serves as Artistic Director. But Dillane's withdrawal from the two West End productions means the shows will now be shelved indefinitely.Instead, theatre fans can look forward to a 2009 reunion of Mendes and Spacey, when the filmmaker will direct Simon Russell Beale in The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard. Despite being a successful theatre director Mendes shot to fame when he won the Oscar for directing for his debut movie American Beauty. Since then he has gone on to direct the critically acclaimed Road to Perdition which landing actor Paul Newman with an Academt Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also directed 2005 war movie Jarhead. The director, who is married to English actress Kate Winslet with whom he has a child, is currently filming Revolutionary Road which will reunite Kate winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio for the first time, on scree, since Titanic.

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