Arriving at the Soho hotel, in London, all spools of freshly cut hair – “I’ve just had it done, I feel a bit self-conscious,” she says, twirling a strand – Sam Taylor-Wood immediately strikes you as bouncy, sharp and fun. Just what you would expect from a woman who is best friends with some of the most alluring celebrities, from Elton John to David Beckham and Damien Hirst to Daniel Craig.

Ah, yes, Craig – the subject of her latest work, the kind of eerie, melancholic portraits in which Taylor-Wood specialises. It’s only her work that tells you the real story about the 41-year-old artist – that, besides all the glitz and fun, she has survived a traumatic childhood and two bouts of cancer.

“I’m onwards, onwards, onwards,” she says briskly, ordering a hot chocolate with soya milk. “I find it difficult to sit still. I’m annoying to be around because I keep twitching. You keep trying to be in the now, but you can’t.”

This particular “now” is a film, Flashbacks of a Fool, for which she took the onset stills as a favour to her “dearest, closest, bestest friend in the whole wide world”, the director and photographer Baillie Walsh.

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