Music superstars don't get much bigger than Taylor Swift. Throughout her sixteen-year career, she has released nine studio albums, 63 singles, and 30 promotional singles. 58 of her releases have had accompanying music videos, and behind each of those videos was a world-class director bringing Swift's vision to life, a list of directors that now includes her bestie Blake Lively. But it's not just music videos the star has worked with directors on. The "willow" singer has released five concert films of her work and appeared as herself in both the Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience film and Hannah Montana: The Movie.
For several years, Swift allowed documentary director Lana Wilson and her team to shadow her. The result was the 2020 documentary Miss Americana, which followed Swift through a personal and professional metamorphic phase of her life. Outside her musical career, Swift has acted in five major motion pictures, including voicing Audrey in the animated film The Lorax and cameoing in the Meryl Streep picture The Giver, by acclaimed Australian director Phillip Noyce. Read on to discover some of the most famous directors Taylor Swift has worked with!
7 Garry Marshall Directed Taylor Swift In Her First Role
Only two weeks after becoming the then-youngest recipient of Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammy Awards (for her 2008 sophomore release Fearless), Taylor Swift made her acting debut in Garry Marshall's romantic comedy Valentine's Day. Swift didn't start small for her debut, jumping right into an ensemble cast of Hollywood heavyweights, including Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jamie Foxx, and Bradley Cooper, in a film directed by one of the most prolific filmmakers in American film history. With a career that began in 1960 and continued until he died in 2016, Marshall directed some of the most iconic and memorable romantic comedies in history including Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries.
6 Tom Hooper Chose Taylor Swift For 'Cats'
Outside her unstoppable music career, Taylor Swift is known for her advocacy of artists' rights, furthering of women's empowerment in the music industry, and speaking up for her beliefs on politics and LGBTQ+ allyship. Above all these personal qualities, however, she may be best known for her love and adoration of cats. So when renowned British director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, The Danish Girl) began turning the stage musical Cats into a feature film, there was no question which pop singer he would turn to for the role of Bombularina.
While promoting the film, Hooper revealed he had almost cast Swift seven years earlier, as Éponine in his adaptation of Les Misérables, but didn't feel that the star fit the character of an impoverished girl who is overlooked. "She rather brilliantly auditioned for Éponine. I didn’t cast her, but I got very close to it," the director told Vulture. "Ultimately, I couldn’t quite believe Taylor Swift was a girl people would overlook. So it didn’t quite feel right for her for the most flattering reason." Knowing Swift was keen to work on a musical, Hooper pitched his ideas for Cats to the singer who loved them and would end up contributing an original song to the production, written alongside composer Andrew Lloyd Weber.
5 Taylor Swift Appears In David O. Russel's Upcoming Film
Despite releasing two mammoth albums amid a pandemic in 2020, and then repeating the act in 2021 with the first two of her re-recordings, Taylor Swift somehow found time to act in David O. Russel's upcoming untitled feature film. Set for release this November, the film, with no story or plot revealed, is only known to be a period film, featuring an ensemble cast including Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, and more. David O. Russel is the Academy Award-nominated writer and director (and frequent Jennifer Lawrence collaborator) behind Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy, who is known for his aggressive outbursts on-set, prompting Swift fans to urge the singer to depart the production.
4 Dave Meyers And Taylor Swift Co-Directed 'ME!'
Swift paired up with veteran music video director Dave Meyers to kick off her Lover era, co-directing the candy-colored "ME!". Meyers's career started with directing rap and hip-hop videos in the late 1990s, and by the early 2000s, he was the go-to director in Hollywood, partnering with some of the biggest names of the day, including Britney Spears, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and Kelly Clarkson. For "ME!", Meyers and Swift created a Hollywood musical pastiche world filled with marching bands, kittens, exploding snakes, and Mary Poppins-style umbrellas. The video broke the 24-hour Vevo record for most views and won several MTV Awards at ceremonies around the world.
3 Jonas Åkerlund Directed Taylor Swift's '1989 World Tour' Concert Film
Swift enlisted Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund to helm her second concert film Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour Live. The award-winning director had previously filmed concert tours for Paul McCartney, and Beyoncé, and won the Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video directing Madonna's Confessions Tour concert film. He has worked on videos with Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Maroon 5 feat. Christina Aguilera. Åkerlund repurposed footage from the concert into the music video for the seventh and final single released from 1989, "New Romantics".
2 Joseph Kahn Filmed Eight Taylor Swift Music Videos
Joseph Kahn is one of the hardest-working music video directors in Hollywood. The visionary director is behind music video spectacles from Britney Spears, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Mariah Carey. Kahn first teamed up with Swift in 2014 for "Blank Space", and would direct eight music videos for the star over the next four years, including the Grammy-winning video for "Bad Blood". Kahn says their relationship thrived because there was no involvement from the record label. "It’s literally her and me," he said. "Whenever we do a video, there is no one else involved in it. If I do an edit, if I do a shot, there is no approval process - she and I just see eye-to-eye - it’s just two creative people getting to be creative, which is a very unusual situation in such a big world like the record industry."
1 Taylor Swift Now Directs Herself
Taylor Swift is arguably one of the most famous people in the music industry, so when it comes to directors, perhaps there are currently none more famous than herself. Swift first dabbled in the craft in 2010, partnering with director Roman White to co-direct the music video for the lead single from third album Speak Now, "Mine". Swift would stick to starring, writing, and producing roles for her fourth, fifth, and sixth albums, but returned to the director's chair with the release of her seventh studio album Lover in 2019, co-directing the music videos for the first three singles "ME!", "You Need To Calm Down", and "Lover".
When it came time to film the video for fourth single "The Man", Swift took on directing duties by herself as it was the easiest and quickest way to get it done. "I knew I wanted to use a female director...it just so happened I couldn't get it done in time with anybody else cause everybody's busy," she said in a behind-the-scenes making-of video. "I know exactly what I want this video to be. I know who I want as DP and AD, so why don't I just try this? Directing by myself for the first time." And she hasn't looked back, self-directing the music videos from her eighth and ninth albums folklore and evermore, as well as the associated concert documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions and All Too Well short film.
