Winslet, Mendes Welcome New Production

By Stephen M. Silverman

Monday December 29, 2003 01:00 PM EST

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"Titanic" actress Kate Winslet and her husband since May, stage and screen director Sam Mendes, are the parents of a baby boy, reports the Associated Press. .

Joe Mendes was born on Dec. 22 in New York, Winslet's publicist, Jennifer Allen, said, adding that young Joe weighed 7 lbs., 13 ozs. at birth. "The couple is overjoyed," Allen said, according to the AP.

Winslet also has a 3-year-old daughter, Mia, from her previous marriage to British film director Jim Threapleton. Winslet and Mendes married in secret in the West Indies in May and announced they were expecting a child in July.

Speaking to London's Daily Mail, Winslet's father, Roger, said he and his wife, Sally, received a call from Kate in the early hours of the morning so she could tell them the news.

Roger Winslet, 63, told the Daily Mail: "I answered the phone and it was a very welcome call. I took the phone back into bed, and we sat there giggling and laughing and feeling how wonderful it was."

He added: "Hopefully we will be seeing the baby soon – we are planning to fly to New York."

The actress, 28, was nominated for Academy Awards for her roles in James Cameron's 1997 sea-disaster blockbuster as well as for 1995's "Sense and Sensibility" and 2001's "Iris."

Mendes, 38, won the best-director Oscar for 1999's "American Beauty." He was nominated this year for "Road to Perdition," and currently has a revival of the musical "Gypsy," starring Bernadette Peters, on Broadway.