Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood
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
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth4 March 1967
admit escape leading life obscure tried until
I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.
create strange time
I struggle if I have chaos around me, but at the same time, if I don't have it, I'm uncomfortable. It's a strange thing: If I don't have chaos, I create it.
money scares
Money scares me, and it always has done. I've got a childish concept of money, and I like to keep it that way in the sense that I don't like to think about it.
focus future hard life mortality plenty seize stared whatever
I've been through plenty in my life where I've really had to focus on the day ahead... because, as I know, the future is, you know, whatever the future is... Once you've stared mortality that hard in the face, you really seize the day.
battle cancer crap cry felt holding lose stuff suppose
I suppose I didn't cry in all the cancer crap stuff because I felt I couldn't lose the battle, and part of the battle was holding myself together.
almost cry
I almost never cry, and it's something I don't like about myself. I sometimes try and make myself cry. Sometimes, when I'm in pain, I say if I could just cry it would make it so much easier.
people turned
I've turned into one of those people who go jogging in parks that I used to hate.
pictures second switch work
I'm motivated every second by my work; it doesn't switch off. The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.
afraid allowing defined hold loss
Sometimes, I get afraid it has defined me, that sense of grief, loss and illness. But actually, it is about allowing myself to take hold and say: 'This is part of who I am, but not only who I am.'
art emotional music retreat trauma understand
I understand what it is to go through emotional trauma and retreat and go into the world of your imagination. I understand how art and music can be a place of safety in a world of reinvention.
definitely trust
Never trust a hippie. That's definitely my motto.
cameraman endlessly helpless quite similar total trying work
My work is made on lines similar to those of a film production. A lot of my work is kind of bureaucratic, endlessly phoning up people, trying to find the cameraman and the lighting man, because I am a total technology-phobe, quite helpless with equipment.
cancer colon felt followed grasp mastectomy
When I had cancer - of the colon first, followed by breast cancer and a mastectomy - my motto used to be 'Drips by day, Prada by night.' I felt that I had to grasp it in the same way as you'd take on any challenge.
love-life thinking sometimes
I love life. I think it's fantastic. Sometimes it deals hard things, and when it deals great things, you have to seize them.