LONDON: Is Titanic star Kate Winslet just another notch on the casting couch of Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes?

Absolutely not, says the mother of the American Beauty director who has dated Cameron Diaz and Calista Flockhart and once said: "The idea of a marriage fills me with dread."

The show business writers and agony aunts who queued up to analyse the breakup of Winslet's brief marriage to assistant director Jim Threapleton now breathlessly ask: "Could Winslet and Mendes be the next Kidman and Cruise?"

Amid the daily headlines about war in Afghanistan, Britain's tabloids have devoted acres of newsprint to the affair between the 35-year-old British director and the 26-year-old "English Rose". Interviews with the two new lovers are given giant spreads.

Winslet, currently filming Alan Parker's The Life of David Gale, said: "I still absolutely believe in true love" -- just three months after her marriage split shocked the show business world.

Mendes, Hollywood's new golden boy after the success of American Beauty, insists he is no marriage wrecker. The director currently making The Road to Perdition for Steven Spielberg's company, said: "I was very careful to ensure that I was not endangering her marriage. Indeed it was already over and I came along well after."

The Daily Telegraph dared to ask: "Is Kate just another notch on his casting couch?"

In its two-page spread on the affair, The Mirror wondered in banner headlines: "Kate finds new love but can she keep hold of her slippery Sam?"

Mendes' mother Valerie, whose marriage broke up when Sam was five, leapt to the defence of her never-married son: "I brought him up to be very straight, not to mess around or play games with people."

But the Mirror's Alexandra Williams is worried. "Deep down Mendes is a troubled man nursing heartache. It would seem the only woman he has ever truly loved is his mother," she said of the lady Mendes took as his date to the glittering Oscars ceremony.

But Sharon Hendry, Woman's Editor of the best-selling Sun, believed that Winslet may have found true love with a big showbiz name after her "split from a lowly third assistant director". Hailing her as a heroic role model for women, the tabloid editor concluded: "She has become a Hollywood superstar without losing the common touch. Cue Sam Mendes who is a safe bet in the equality stakes at least."

And the tabloids and celebrity magazines can rest assured -- this romantic script looks set to run and run.