“Tea is a huge part of my life.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m motivated every second by my work; it doesn’t switch off. The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I love life. I think it’s fantastic. Sometimes it deals hard things, and when it deals great things, you have to seize them.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When I had cancer, people were surprised at how cheerful and upbeat I was, but I couldn’t let myself go to depression – to go there, that defeat would allow everything in. If you look too far into the abyss, you might never come out again. You can stand on the abyss and peep but not give in to sadness.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“If you love someone, you love someone. It doesn’t matter; age, colour, c’mon!”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Having children is exciting. Life puts the past into perspective.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My biggest fears aren’t with my work. My biggest fears are walking through hospital doors. Once you can face that, being fearless about your work is easy.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I can be very self-destructive, but quietly.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My favorite part of the whole filmmaking process is working with a fantastic cinematographer, a fantastic actor or actors, and then just creating emotions and stories. I get so excited by that. That’s the part I’m utterly addicted to.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When I decide I want something, I go in like an Exocet missile.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I love showing my scar on my tummy – it is shaped like a question mark.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think people are frightened of women making big decisions.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I believe that life is short, and there is too much time wasted bearing grudges, and I like to move on.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Seriously, I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it meant endless possibilities. I came from a badly managed family background, so art was a way of reinventing myself.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I don’t think you can judge something without seeing it.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’ve turned into one of those people who go jogging in parks that I used to hate.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I feel lucky to be getting older. The fact that I made it to 30 and then 40 was big enough. So I can’t get too down on getting older; otherwise, it kind of undoes everything I’ve fought for.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.’”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I love karaoke. I love maudlin country ballads. In another life, I’d be Loretta Lynn.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m annoying to be around because I keep twitching.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“In the old days, ‘controversial’ in a relationship meant same-sex or mixed races.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Seeing a new play in a first-time production is so exciting – when it’s good, you want to shout from the rooftops.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I am just reflecting the times. I can’t ignore them.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’ve made lots of big decisions in my life that have shocked people.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“In my life, I’ve never really listened to when people start forming opinions on how you should be doing things.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I took on cancer like I take on everything – like a mission and a job to accomplish.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I feel like I’ve lost 10 years of my life to cancer.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My mum has lived in Australia for 22 years now, and we have a rocky relationship. But at the same time it’s one I want to maintain. I need her to be my mum. The relationship took a lot of rebuilding.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When you’re no longer ill, and everyone’s gotten over the fact that you’ve had cancer, that core of steel doesn’t go away, and then I had to find other channels for it.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Relationships can go wrong very simply, very quickly, and when you have children you become more aware of relationships around you.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I find that I put my body in my work when I am at a particularly difficult or joyous point because I want to feel that moment.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I feel the art world in New York has a stronger following than Britain. If you go to a New York art district on a Saturday morning, it will be so busy with families and openings – art is much more ingrained in the culture.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I felt giving birth was the most creative act of all my creative acts – literally creation!”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My childhood had its challenges, like everyone’s. It imbued me with certain things and took away others. It made me very determined.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I never thought of having cancer as something that was unfair. I just braced myself and tried to get through it.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it’s leading me and I’ll follow the process through, and it’s not until after I’ve seen it that I truly understand why I’m doing this.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’ve always lived my life fearlessly, and what I want to do with my life, I do.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m interested in taking raw human emotions and then isolating them without any narrative structure. In order to achieve this, I try to break out of the narrative conventions that you’d see in a typical feature film.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I went to Goldsmith College of Art in London in the ’80s and there I made sculptures, but the objects had nothing to do with how I was thinking. I was making beautifully sanded wooden boxes!”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I remember as a kid not ever wanting to have friends around to my house because it was, for want of a better description, disheveled.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Sorry, there’s nothing like a screaming baby to make a mother twitch.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I have a massive phobia for schedules and calendars. I need people to tell me where I need to be. I can’t bear to see it in black and white. I think it’s a fear of being pinned down.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I hate rats. I had a pet rat to try and overcome it. I even gave him mouth-to mouth resuscitation when he had a heart attack. But I couldn’t conquer it.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I seize all opportunities with two hands. Everything that’s happened to me has taught me to live in the moment as much as possible.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“One of the few times I saw my mother cry was when Lennon died, and the other time was when Elvis died.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m good at keeping secrets.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Anonymity would be a fantastic umbrella. I don’t like intrusion.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m the lightest sleeper. I can hear a pin drop. It’s been worse since I was ill. I think your inner ear is always half open, listening out for the faintest danger sign.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“At school, I always felt the art room was the place where you could sit and talk. It was a place of solace. I wasn’t the best artist at school by a long shot; it was more the understanding and the support that came from that room.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I really have learned to live in the moment. I don’t question things too much or try to project into the future. That’s how life should be.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Britain can sometimes feel like a very small village, and you’re this, I dunno, scarlet woman they’re all gossiping about.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Never trust a hippie. That’s definitely my motto.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don’t have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“If someone looks genuinely interested and asks me a deeply personal question, I’ll give the answer. I’m too open.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I like Alexander McQueen’s work a lot: he’s always pushing boundaries, and he’s rough around the edges.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“People in love don’t see gender, colour or religion. Or age. It’s about the other person, the one that you love and who loves you. You don’t think of them in terms of a label. You just go with your heart.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of our age; he’s like Olivier. He’s one of those people who can take you into a place where no one else can take you.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I had two primary cancers, which was pretty unusual. And when I got the second one, people told me such terrible bad-news stories, they instigated fears that weren’t there in the first place. I do remember with such gratitude one doctor saying to me, ‘Two primaries? That’s nothing. I’ve seen a patient with six.’”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“A lot of children remember seeing cartoons, ‘Pinocchio’ or ‘Bambi’ or something that breaks their heart. I remember seeing ‘The Blue Angel’ and it breaking my heart. It was the first time I realised there was an adult world – that adults could damage each other or destroy each other emotionally.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“In ‘Fifty Shades,’ seemingly, Christian has all the power and control – but actually, Anastasia does.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“You think, ‘You hired me because I’m a creative artist with a vision. Don’t try and knock it out of me.’”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m very blessed with the perfect husband.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Directing ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ has been an intense and incredible journey for which I am hugely grateful. I have Universal to thank for that.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“It would be nice to be a bit autonomous again, to enjoy something a bit quiet.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Sometimes photographing people is like pulling teeth, trying to get some sort of personality.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I don’t understand why there aren’t more powerful female directors. I don’t have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I am completely, utterly obsessed with clothes. To an embarrassing extent.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“There’s definitely something transformative about clothes.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When I was eight, a hippie guy taught me how to meditate and gave me this scarf I was supposed to wear when I meditated. I still have it; it’s probably one of the items that mean most to me.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My mother reads tarot cards, actually, but I won’t let her read mine.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I get over-excited by every opportunity that comes my way. I end up doing too much.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I want to protect my vision, and that’s the hardest thing.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Shooting at Coco Chanel’s apartment was an unexpectedly absorbing experience. The essence of Chanel is firmly rooted there in all of her possessions, and I truly believe that her spirit and soul still inhabit the second floor.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I don’t eat any dairy products at all, usually – it’s a self-imposed ban. I’ve done it for a year now, since I was ill, but it’s so hard.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“You have to be brave when you’ve got a kid.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I was living with my stepfather for a while, and then I moved out and went and lived on my own in Hastings-by-the-Sea from about 16.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My mum has always been quite free-spirited, and she has taught me a lot. I think that is probably why I have the sort of mind that I do.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think it was Elisabeth Shue who said that if you start a movie with a woman seen through a man’s eyes, that woman is objectified by him throughout.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“The thing that is so great about Ang Lee is the diversity in his filmmaking, from ‘Brokeback…’ to ‘The Hulk.’”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think I just love films where men have complete breakdowns.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Even today I work with Niall O’Brien, who is far more technically astute than I am, but I still have the clearest idea of every detail I want in my photograph.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“A friend got me a job on the door of the Camden Palace nightclub, which quickly progressed to running the place.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m twitchy. I think I’ve got ADD. I find it hard to sit down. I need to be constantly challenged; otherwise, I get very… well, I guess ‘bored’ is the word.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m fascinated by male vulnerability.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“The line between private and public lives is a fertile one for me. I’ve lived quite a public life, and it’s the reason I have used well-known people in my work. I’m interested in what’s going on beneath the facades they present to the world, taking them to a place which is uncomfortable.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I keep seeing in the papers that I am good friends with Samantha Cameron. I’ve never met her in my life.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When you have an author and an auteur, it’s a difficult and challenging relationship.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’m not a shouter, and I’m not a bully.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When Scorsese or Coppola cast celebrities in their work, it goes without question.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“My mum told me once I was a Hindu.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Just because you’ve faced your own mortality, it doesn’t make it any less frightening.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I eat all the time, and I run all the time.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Mum and Dad split up when I was nine. We upped and moved from London to Sussex, and suddenly I went from an urban life to nothing in the countryside – with a new father and new life.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think I was lucky I got into art college. That’s what saved me.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I was always interested in film, but I never knew how to go about becoming a filmmaker.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I feel like I became an artist by default. I went to art college, but my interest was always more towards film than painting or sculpture.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’d like to make something about someone who hasn’t existed so that I don’t have to tread so carefully and can feel a little bit more creative freedom.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I’d love to make a thriller.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“There are terrible things going on in the world, but I am not going to force them down everyone’s throats.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I am not famous at all.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I only photograph myself at poignant moments in my life as a check of where I am and how large my thighs are.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it’s always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“It’s difficult for me to work with women, because I find that direct references are made back to me too fast. Working with men, it gives it a little distance.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“If you have the ideas, and you’re a creative person, then you don’t really differentiate in how your ideas manifest themselves.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“A woman going out with a younger man feels like the last taboo.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I was determined to have a spotless house when I grew up.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Despite great advances in women’s rights, statistics show that when it comes to the balance of power between the sexes, equality is far from being a global reality.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.’”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“It was so amazing to fall crazily in love and get married and have kids.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“To be feminist doesn’t mean you can’t be submissive.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“Snobbery just inhibits you.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I think the whole of people’s psychology and where they are in life interests me, and the decisions you make that take you on particular journeys to different places.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“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.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“When I was out in Georgia doing photographs, I found myself trying to undo my own sense of composition. I’d think, ‘Why do I want to take it like this? Is it because I want to take a beautiful picture?’ It’s quite hard to try and undo it.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
“I try to leave things as open ended as possible, not too overladen with meaning.”
― Sam Taylor-Johnson
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