Sam Taylor-Johnson: Nine things we learned from her This Cultural Life interview

1. Aged nine, Sam's world turned upside-down

Taylor-Johnson says she had a “fairly regular childhood” until the age of nine: “It all just went a bit upside-down when my parents split and my dad disappeared." She describes her dad as “a secretive man” who went to travel round the world. She still has no idea where he really went during that time. Taylor-Johnson’s mother also left, when she met another man, leaving her children with their stepdad. Taylor-Johnson calls them “very traumatic times, but you get to a certain point in life when you’ve just got to let it go."

2. She found herself when she found a camera

Taylor-Johnson struggled at school – “I messed up all my exams” – but enjoyed art and, after a spell at a polytechnic college, found her way to Goldsmiths, alongside artists like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. Collectively, they would change the face of contemporary art. “They were all there and coming up and I just was sort of in the slipstream, holding onto the tail of everything,” she says. However, it wasn’t until after she left art school, when her cousin gave her a camera, that Taylor-Johnson found her artistic purpose. “I found my voice through taking pictures. I suddenly felt like I had a tool that made sense to me."

3. She was reluctant to photograph David Beckham

Taylor-Johnson grew into one of the most famous photographers in the UK. She took vulnerable self-portraits and shot many celebrities. Her most famous portrait almost didn’t happen. “I went for a meeting at the National Portrait Gallery and they said, ‘We’d love you to take a photograph of David Beckham,'” she says. She was resistant, purely because everyone had shot Beckham. “He’s the most photographed man in the world. What am I going to do that’s going to be any different?” Her choice was to film him sleeping, for 107 minutes. “I told him, ‘I’ve got this camera and you can pretend to sleep, but I’m going to wait until you’re actually asleep, so you might as well get on with it.'”

4. She changed her life after receiving cancer treatment

Taylor-Johnson was diagnosed with colon cancer at 29 and breast cancer at 33. After treatment for breast cancer, Taylor-Johnson's life changed, she “radically shifted and... flipped everything on its head.” She left her marriage to art dealer Jay Joplin, who she calls “a great person”, and “put myself on a different path that I felt was better for me." She says it was a complete rethinking of who she was. “[I went from] PG Tips with milk and two sugars to a green tea person. A late night party person to a don’t go out [person]… It was a radical shift to understand who I was from a different place."

5. Anthony Minghella encouraged her to make films

As successful as she was as a photographer, Taylor-Johnson wasn’t really considering directing, until she was asked to be a judge at the British Independent Film Awards, alongside the late British director Anthony Minghella. “I was really outspoken and probably annoying to the other jurors, because I was just like, ‘Well, that’s rubbish. Why is it even in there?’” Minghella spoke to her after the judging and said, "'Have you considered making films? Because you seem very knowledgeable.’ By which I think he meant 'very opinionated.’” He produced her first short film, Love You More, “and that was the launchpad for me.”

6. She had to fight for her first movie

Taylor-Johnson’s first feature film was Nowhere Boy, about a young John Lennon. It was not a film that fell into her lap. “I read it and connected to it on such a fundamentally deep level,” she says. She felt she “had to make it” but the film’s producers wanted to go with a different director. She pursued them every time she saw them. “I just said, ‘I think a woman needs to do this and I have to do this.' To their credit, they listened and then that was it, I was doing it.”

7. She has no comment on her husband becoming Bond

The lead in Nowhere Boy was Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who later became Sam's husband. They’ve now been married 14 years. Mr Taylor-Johnson has been in the news lately as the rumoured next James Bond. The possible future Mrs Taylor-Bond is confirming nothing: “Listen, if it happens, it will be great. Everyone can continually speculate until anything becomes a reality."

8. She wants a break from biopics

Three of Taylor-Johnson’s films have been based on real people: John Lennon, author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces), and now Amy Winehouse. She’d like her next film to be fictional. “I’ve just spent two and a half years in Amy Winehouse’s life,” she says. “It was such an emotional connection… that I feel like the movie I make next needs to be a palate cleanser, in the sense of not being about someone who lived. It’s such an enormous responsibility to take on."

9. She’s very conscious of time

“I have a jam-packed warehouse in my head that needs releasing," says Taylor-Johnson. “I’m not very good at taking my foot off the pedal, because I just have this sense of time. I need to make at least another four films. I’ve got to keep pushing myself forward in my art world.” And that’s just at work. She’s equally as busy at home. “I have four kids and 14 animals. It’s an organised chaos."