Sam Mendes-Directed iPhone 4 "FaceTime" Commercial

The new Apple iPhone commercial directed by Sam Mendes, the Academy Award-winning director of American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go, is now online. The commercial premiered after Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 4 during Apple's WWDC keynote today (June 7th 2010).

But this isn't the first time that Apple has employed a big director for their television commercials... The Northern California-based computer company has a long history of hiring big name filmmaker for their television spots (chronicled in brief after the jump).

It all really started with "1984", a commercial directed by Ridley Scott which aired nationally during Super Bowl XVIII. You might remember it featured a woman wearing with a white tanktop with a Picasso-style picture of Apple's Macintosh computer, running through an Orwellian world to throw a sledgehammer at a huge television with an image of "Big Brother" IBM, and famously concluding in voice over "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'."

Academy Award-winning Documentarian Errol Morris directed the famous "Switch" campaign in 2002, which featured "real people" who had "switched".

And most recently, Apple fanatic David Fincher directed the iPhone 3Gs comemrcial which was released last year.