Standing by their love story. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sam Taylor-Johnson have defended their relationship — and their age gap — through the years.
The couple originally met when Aaron auditioned for Sam’s directional debut, Nowhere Boy. According to the England native, her now-husband didn’t have much availability due to his Kick-Ass filming schedule, so he auditioned at her home.
“It was so inconvenient,” Sam, who was going through a divorce with Jay Jopling at the time, recalled during a 2017 interview with The Sunday Times UK. “In the end, I was like, ‘OK, he’ll have to come to my home.’ I opened my door to John Lennon. I instantly knew he was the guy.”
The director noted that she shared a “connection” with Aaron while they worked on the project together, saying, “He was very intense and absolutely mind made-up [about us dating].”
In 2009, the pair announced that they were engaged and expanded their family with two daughters. (Sam, for her part, was already a mom to two kids with Jopling.)
“I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person,” the Anna Karenina star told The Telegraph UK in 2017. “I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child.”
Shortly after their 2012 nuptials, Aaron and Sam changed their last names to the joint Taylor-Johnson variation. The Marvel star said it was important for him to see his new moniker in the credits of his upcoming films.
“Actually, I wanted it on Savages as well, but they told me the posters had already gone out. Then they said: ‘Look, we hired Aaron Johnson,’” he detailed to The Guardian in 2015, adding that he fought to see the change with other projects. “I said: ‘I want it changed! This is important.’ It felt beautiful. It felt right.”
Over the years, Aaron and Sam have clapped back against criticism of their 10-year age gap. In 2017, the Godzilla actor slammed the “intrusive” response when he and Sam first took their relationship public.
“But having to deal with that early in my career probably got me to a place where I can more quickly just go, ‘Oh, f—k it’ instead of wanting to rip someone’s head off for asking questions I don’t like,” he shared during an interview with New York Magazine.
The photographer, meanwhile, praised the bond she formed with Aaron. “I literally found my soulmate,” she detailed in 2017. “I feel so blessed: every day I wake up happy. We spend every minute of the day together.”
Sam continued: “My friends call him Benjamin Button because he has — on the outside — such youth, and on the inside, he is so wise and settled. He doesn’t like parties. He likes being at home and cooking for the family. He likes walking the dogs. He loves his chickens — he collects the eggs and makes breakfast for everyone. He is an amazing man.”
The Solos executive producer said she wasn’t bothered by the difference in age between her and Aaron because of their lengthy union.
“We’ve been together for over a decade now, so I feel like it is less of a conversation for people,” she told The Daily Beast in 2019. “It doesn’t worry me, and it’s not something that is difficult to talk about because it’s such a positive story, that we’re a decade later together and working together and raising a strong family together. That may be a positive message for people out there.”
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