Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet and her director husband Sam Mendes have separated after six years of marriage.

The Hollywood A-listers’ split was “amicable”, the British couple’s lawyer says.

Winslet, winner of the 2009 best actress Oscar for The Reader, married Mendes, awarded the best director Oscar in 2000 for American Beauty, in May 2003.

“Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year,” lawyer Keith Schilling said in a statement.

“The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement.

“Both parties are fully committed to the joint parenting of their children,” Mr Schilling added.

“They ask that the media respect the privacy of the family.”

Winslet and Mendes have a six-year-old son, Joe. Winslet also has a nine-year-old daughter, Mia, from her previous marriage to Jim Threapleton, an assistant director she met while making the low-budget film Hideous Kinky.

The 34-year-old British actress rose to global prominence as the romantic heroine in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

Winslet was married for just over three years to Threapleton, but they divorced in December 2001.

She and Mendes became a couple within two months of her split from Threapleton.

They made their first public appearance in Britain together in 2002 when they attended the premiere of Mendes’ second film, The Road To Perdition.

Mendes, 44, directed Winslet in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road, an experience he described as “exhilarating”. He also confessed he saw “a side of her I just didn’t know”.

The film, about a disintegrating marriage in 1950s suburban America, reunited Winslet with DiCaprio and won her a Golden Globe for best actress.

Often described as one of Hollywood’s “golden couples”, Winslet and Mendes were based in New York.

Mendes attended the ceremony with Winslet when she won the Oscar last year, but this year she went to the event alone.

Educated at Britain’s prestigious Cambridge University, Mendes made his name as a theatre director, before his spectacular success with American Beauty which won five Oscars, including a best actor gong for Kevin Spacey.

Mendes’ past loves have included British actresses Jane Horrocks and Rachel Weisz.

Winslet’s film credits also include World War II drama Enigma in 2001 and the 2006 romantic comedy The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law.

She is currently filming the HBO TV mini-series Mildred Pierce with director Todd Haynes and actors Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood. It is about a divorced single mother.

- AFP