Sam Taylor Johnson has a new Netflix show and a new feature in the current issue of The Hollywood Reporter. In some ways, I feel sorry for Sam – while her marriage to 24-years-younger Aaron Taylor Johnson is accepted in their circle of friends, I’m sure there are some people who will always side-eye her for becoming romantically entangled with someone who was 18 years old (she was 42 at the time). I also feel sorry for her because Fifty Shades of Grey will probably be a big chunk of her epitaph and she absolutely loathed the experience. Those two subjects (Aaron and FSOG) tend to overshadow the fact that she was always a well-respected photographer/artist and she is definitely a wonderful director. Maybe her new show will bring a different dimension to her profile – it’s called Gypsy and it stars Naomi Watts as “a therapist who gets over-involved in her patients’ lives.” Still, the most interesting quotes from this THR piece are about Aaron and FSOG, so… good luck to her. Some highlights:
She’s ready to start exhibiting her photography again: “I’m almost ready to start showing them to galleries, if that’s even a possibility again… The California light has affected my work in such a positive way. I lived in gray for such a long time.”
Her first marriage: In 1997, at age 30, she married a wealthy gallerist named Jay Jopling and started living the posh life. They had two children, but something was missing. “I lived it large for a little while,” she says. “But I wasn’t happy in the glitzy-glamour, high-market, fancy living. That was a big lesson.”
Beating colon cancer & then breast cancer: “The first time didn’t change my perspective. The second time, I changed everything. I went through all the treatments. I did chemotherapy. I lost hair. I did the mastectomy. And then I changed my diet, my world, my art.”
Her marriage to Aaron: “If I gave a second thought to other people, I would be the unhappiest person, probably still in a miserable marriage. People like to talk about it. I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it works better than my last marriage.’ It’s lasted longer than a lot of my friends’ marriages.”
Her beef with E.L. James: “Two different creative visions. Her vision versus mine, and they were polar opposite. Every scene was fought over. It was tough. It was like wading uphill through sticky tar. Her thing was, ‘This is what the fans expect.’ I’d be like, ‘Well, let’s try and hit those marks but create a new universe at the same time.’ ”
Even though FSOG was a box office success, she didn’t get any other offers: “There weren’t any flat-out [job] offers straight away. It was ego-denting, which may not have been a bad thing. At the same time, I was like, ‘Oh, I still have to keep fighting for stuff.’ I just thought it was going to come a lot easier.”
She wasn’t even asked to do Fifty Shades Darker: “There was a tentative plan that I would be involved with the following two. [But the studio] wanted to see how the first one went before any discussion. It went well in terms of box office. But less well with my relationship with Erika.”
She wants to work with Aaron: At the moment, she and her husband are finishing a screenplay together. She would direct and he would star. “We’re already a team,” says Aaron, best known as Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron (or, to a different crowd, as the sinister killer in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals). “We are already parents that run our house, so when we work together it’s the best.”
Her dream project: “In my dreams. I would love to direct a James Bond movie. I grew up on James Bond. One day, who knows?”
We talk so much about dream-casting James Bond and who should be the next Bond and whether Daniel Craig is over it, but really: hiring a woman to direct a Bond film is a great idea. Even more specifically, hiring Sam to direct would be a great idea. Sam Mendes got good reviews for his Bond films, but I found them poorly directed overall (Spectre was trash). Sam could do some interesting things. And she’s friends/friendly with Daniel Craig already. Hm. As for what she says about E.L. James… I think she’s being quite diplomatic. As for what she says about her marriage… “Yeah, but it works better than my last marriage.” I understand that, truly. And I’m sure Sam and Aaron are happier right now than most married couples. But… I still have issues. He was just a boy when she seduced him.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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