Sam Taylor-Johnson: ‘When A Door Slams In Your Face You Have To Learn To Kick It down’

The night before I interview the British artist Sam Taylor-Johnson, 55, I attend an early evening drinks party at the Chiltern Firehouse hosted in her honour by the American denim brand Citizens of Humanity to celebrate her takeover of its annual magazine, Humanity. It is her first visit to London in two years and this inherently private woman, a member of the late 1990s YBA movement, which included iconoclasts such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers, is clearly nervous. Not to mention that her flight from LA, where she has lived for the past nine years with her husband, the actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 31, and their children, only landed that morning.

All her gang are there: the Davids (Walliams and Furnish);