Actress Winslet and director Mendes split

Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet and her director husband Sam Mendes have separated after six years of marriage, the British couple's lawyer said yesterday.

The Hollywood A-listers' split was "amicable".

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

"Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year. The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement," London lawyer Keith Schilling said in a statement.

"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."

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

The 34-year-old British actress rose to global prominence as the romantic heroine in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She was married for just over three years to Mr Threapleton, but they divorced in December 2001. Mr Mendes and Ms Winslet became a couple within two months of her split from Mr Threapleton.

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

Mr Mendes, 44, directed his wife in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road, an experience he described as "exhilarating", and confessed he saw "a side of her I just didn't know".

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

Often described as one of Hollywood's "golden couples", Ms Winslet and Mr Mendes were based in New York.

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

Educated at Britain's prestigious Cambridge University, he 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.