Sam Taylor-Johnson
Sam Taylor-Johnson
Samantha Louise "Sam" Taylor-Johnson OBEis an English filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. Her directorial feature film debut came in 2009 with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of the Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon. She is one of a group of artists known as the Young British Artists...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth4 March 1967
ended
I try to leave things as open ended as possible, not too overladen with meaning.
manifest
If you have the ideas, and you're a creative person, then you don't really differentiate in how your ideas manifest themselves.
autonomous bit
It would be nice to be a bit autonomous again, to enjoy something a bit quiet.
artwork cross filmmaking films great precedent
I think, for me, Julian Schnabel set a great precedent in being able to cross over so successfully. I feel like his artwork is kind of big, grand, and bombastic, yet the films that he makes are very beautifully sensitive, and I just feel that his filmmaking sensibility is very different from his artwork.
feels finding hardest mickey mouse
Finding your place as an artist is the hardest thing. You come out of college with what feels like a Mickey Mouse degree that qualifies you for nothing in the real world.
life
Tea is a huge part of my life.
bit drinking rein round running spend time yoga
I can be a bit extreme. I'll spend too much time running round the park, doing yoga and drinking green tea. I can get a bit obsessive. I have to rein it in sometimes.
affect hospitals people time types
People tell you you're having chemotherapy, but there are different types of chemotherapy, and you don't know which one you're going to get and how it's going to affect you. The people in the hospitals don't always have time to help you understand it.
bit later line looking step work
Sometimes when you're looking at your own work, you can't really see, and it's only when you step back a little bit later that you think, 'Oh, that's completely in line with everything else I've done.'
people trying
Sometimes photographing people is like pulling teeth, trying to get some sort of personality.
acting interested people proportion seem specific staging work
I'm interested in the acting and staging of specific emotions, and so I work with actors. It's a small proportion of what I do, but it's always what people seem to focus on.
definitely gave grew lives slight
The way I was grew up gave me a slight fearlessness and a sense of independence. There are things about it that have definitely informed me. And then, as a parent, it's done the opposite. It's made me feel much more protective. There are boundaries in my kids' lives that I don't think I had.
bad boom quite stepfather
My stepfather was quite into opera, but he'd play it when he was in a bad mood, so you'd hear this boom through the floor, Wagner, and you'd feel nervous.
beatle exposed lennon mom playing quite
My parents were Beatle fans, but my mom was especially a Lennon fan, so I was exposed to him more. I remember her playing 'Double Fantasy' quite often.