Sam Taylor-Johnson

Samantha Louise Taylor-Johnson (née Taylor-Wood; born 4 March 1967) is a British filmmaker. Her directorial feature film debut was 2009's Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of the Beatles' singer and songwriter John Lennon. She is one of a group of artists known as the Young British Artists.

Early life

Samantha Taylor-Wood was born in Croydon, London. Her father, David, left the family when she was nine. Her mother, Geraldine, is a yoga teacher and astrologist. She has a younger sister, Ashley, and a maternal half-brother, Kristian.

Taylor-Wood grew up near Streatham Common in south London until her parents' divorce. The family then moved into an old schoolhouse in Jarvis Brook in East Sussex, and Samantha went to Beacon Community College. She later attended Goldsmiths, University of London.

Career

Fine art

Taylor-Johnson began exhibiting fine-art photography in the early 1990s. One collaboration with Henry Bond, titled 26 October 1993, featured Bond and Taylor-Johnson 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.

In 1994, she exhibited a multi-screen video work titled Killing Time, in which four people mimed to an opera score. From that point multi-screen video works became the main focus of her work. Beginning with the video works Travesty of a Mockery and Pent-Up in 1996. One of Taylor-Johnson's first United Kingdom solo shows was held at the Chisenhale Gallery, east London, in September–October 1996. She was nominated for the annual Turner Prize in 1998. She won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale.