Sam Taylor-Johnson

Samantha Louise "Sam" Taylor-JohnsonOBE (born Taylor-Wood; 4 March 1967) is 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.

Early life

She was born Samantha Taylor-Wood in Croydon, London. Her father David left the family when she was nine. Her mother, Geraldine, is a yoga teacher and astrologer. She has one younger sister Ashley, and a maternal half-brother, Kristian. Taylor-Johnson grew up near Streatham Common in south London until her parents' divorce. The family then moved and lived in an old school house in Jarvis Brook in East Sussex, and Samantha went to Beacon Community College.

Career

Fine art

Taylor-Wood began exhibiting fine art photography in the early 1990s. One collaboration with Henry Bond, titled 26 October 1993, featured Bond and Taylor-Wood reprising the roles of Yoko Ono and John Lennon in a pastiche of the photo-portrait made—by photographer Annie Leibovitz—a few hours before Lennon was assassinated, in 1980.