Top 90 Sam Taylor-Johnson Quotes

When Scorsese or Coppola cast celebrities in their work, it goes without question.

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.

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.

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!

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.

I am not famous at all.

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.

Having children is exciting. Life puts the past into perspective.

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.

I was determined to have a spotless house when I grew up.

I feel like I’ve lost 10 years of my life to cancer.

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.’

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.

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.

I was always interested in film, but I never knew how to go about becoming a filmmaker.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m annoying to be around because I keep twitching.

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.

I’m very blessed with the perfect husband.

I’m good at keeping secrets.

My mum told me once I was a Hindu.

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.

I love life. I think it’s fantastic. Sometimes it deals hard things, and when it deals great things, you have to seize them.

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.

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.

I want to protect my vision, and that’s the hardest thing.

If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it’s always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.

You have to be brave when you’ve got a kid.

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.

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

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.

I think I just love films where men have complete breakdowns.

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.

You think, ‘You hired me because I’m a creative artist with a vision. Don’t try and knock it out of me.’

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.

Sometimes photographing people is like pulling teeth, trying to get some sort of personality.

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.

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.

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.

Anonymity would be a fantastic umbrella. I don’t like intrusion.

I can be very self-destructive, but quietly.

I think I was lucky I got into art college. That’s what saved me.

It would be nice to be a bit autonomous again, to enjoy something a bit quiet.

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.

I love showing my scar on my tummy – it is shaped like a question mark.

I felt giving birth was the most creative act of all my creative acts – literally creation!

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.

Seeing a new play in a first-time production is so exciting – when it’s good, you want to shout from the rooftops.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

Britain can sometimes feel like a very small village, and you’re this, I dunno, scarlet woman they’re all gossiping about.

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.

I’ve always lived my life fearlessly, and what I want to do with my life, I do.

When you have an author and an auteur, it’s a difficult and challenging relationship.

Just because you’ve faced your own mortality, it doesn’t make it any less frightening.