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
If you love someone, you love someone. It doesn’t matter; age, colour, c’mon!
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
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
It would be nice to be a bit autonomous again, to enjoy something a bit quiet.
Sam Taylor-Johnson
I’m motivated every second by my work; it doesn’t switch off.
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
In ‘Fifty Shades,’ seemingly, Christian has all the power and control – but actually, Anastasia does.
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
In the old days, ‘controversial’ in a relationship meant same-sex or mixed races.
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
I love showing my scar on my tummy – it is shaped like a question mark.
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
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
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
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
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
When I decide I want something, I go in like an Exocet missile.
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
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
I don’t think you can judge something without seeing it.
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
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
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