Celebrity Biographies
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
He started acting at the age of 8 and when he was barely over 20, John Lennon, Charles Chaplin, a peculiar superhero and even Keira Knightley’s lover in “Anna Karenina” have already been on the big screen. Unintentionally, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is building a pretty solid career for himself.
Born on June 13, 1990, in Buckinghamshire, south-east England, Aaron Perry Johnson is the son of a civil engineer and a housewife. At the age of 6, he was already on stage, beginning a theatrical career that included productions of works by William Shakespeare and Arthur Miller .
He made his film debut at 12 in the action film The Shanghai Rebels , with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson , where he plays a street urchin who turns out to be future filmmaker Charles Chaplin . He then went on to learn some magic to play Edward Norton as a child in The Illusionist . At this time he took part in some television productions and films such as The Prince of Thieves and The Best .
His life and career took a turn when he was cast to play John Lennon himself in his youth, in Nowhere Boy , revolving around the relationships of the popular Beatles musician with his absent mother ( Anne-Marie Duff ) and aunt ( an inspired Kristin Scott Thomas ). During filming, Aaron Taylor-Johnson fell in love with the director, feature debutant Sam Taylor-Wood , despite the fact that she was twice his age. Coming from photography and video art, Taylor-Wood was already the mother of two daughters then, the result of her previous relationship with the millionaire Jay Jopling. With Aaron Taylor-Johnsonshe has given birth to two more daughters. “Our relationship is positive, because no one gets hurt and no one is unhappy. They only talk about our age difference, but we don’t take that into account,” the actor commented.
Nowhere Boy was a huge hit, especially in Britain, which is why Taylor-Johnson was cast as the main character in Kick-Ass. Ready to Smash by Matthew Vaughn , opposite Chloë Grace Moretz and Nicolas Cage . Based on a comic by Mark Millar , the actor had to give life to a young man passionate about comics who, without superpowers or anything, decided to become a superhero. The sequel is about to hit the screens.
When Orlando Bloom quit Albert Nobbs because he was about to become a father, Taylor-Johnson took over as Joe, an unemployed man who gets a job as a maintenance man at a hotel. In Savages , Oliver Stone turned him into a peaceful young Buddhist who deals marijuana, along with his best friend.
Joe Wright thought he was the ideal person to give him the role of Count Vronsky in Anna Karenina , a revision of Leo Tolstoy’s immortal novel, alongside Keira Knightley and Jude Law . “He is an actor capable of surrendering to the role, with the perfect physique to play a seductive and sensitive man,” explains the filmmaker. “Also, he is younger than Keira and in the novel Anna he is also older than Vronski.”
The future looks pretty good for the English actor. For now, he has signed on for the new version of Godzilla , where he will face the famous giant dinosaur, under the direction of Gareth Edwards ( Monster ).