The directors Aaron Taylor-Johnson is dying to work with: “I doubt any of them could give a shit”
The concept of a ‘glow-up’ is a fairly modern one; nobody really seemed to have them before about 2020, or if they did, they weren’t described as such. Probably the most famous example in recent years is Chris Pratt, who went from slightly podgy but very amusing computer jockey Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, to the mega-ripped action star we know and love today. But it can equally be applied to British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who started off not so long ago as a weedy John Lennon in Nowhere Boy but now takes down hordes of vicious criminals as muscle-bound Marvel star Kraven the Hunter.
To give Taylor-Johnson some credit, though, he had already transitioned from teen heartthrob in 2008’s Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging to handing out some very effective beatdowns in the two Kick Ass movies. It was those films that alerted movie makers to the young actor’s superhero potential and not long after that Marvel cast him in the Avengers: Age of Ultron, playing Pietro Maximoff, codename Quicksilver, the moustachioed Slovakian who could run at a reasonably rapid 400 metres per second.
It was in 2012 that Taylor-Johnson married film director Sam Taylor-Johnson, causing a few raised eyebrows thanks to their age gap when they met on the set of Nowhere Boy, but the couple have been together ever since. Perhaps given Taylor-Johnson’s love of great directors it wasn’t a surprise that he ended up wedded to one.
He told Rotten Tomatoes about his desire to work with some of the industry’s very best behind the camera when naming his five favourite movies, although back then, he felt it was unlikely they’d reciprocate. The first director he mentioned was Quentin Tarantino, the genius behind Pulp Fiction, a movie Taylor-Johnson first watched as a very young kid. He explained: “Tarantino. That was where my appreciation of directors began. It was beyond the actors at that point. Everything he’s touched I’ve loved. I became a huge fan of him and his work.”
One man building on Tarantino’s legacy is David Fincher, who will soon be directing a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood starring Brad Pitt. Of Fincher’s seminal 1999 movie Fight Club, Taylor-Johnson says: “David Fincher, man — Fight Club, Se7en, those things. This was another film that, when I watched it at the time, I had to watch it again, to understand it almost. I was just entranced with it.”
Another legendary, if sometimes controversial director is The Godfather’s Francis Ford Coppola, and Taylor-Johnson acknowledges the array of quality present in the director’s Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, explaining: “Just the stories that happened on that set. Great performances and a wonderful, entrancing movie — Brando and Dennis Hopper and Duvall.”
The Coen brothers are an all-time favourite of Taylor-Johnson, who describes their Jeff Bridges slacker comedy The Big Lebowski as “so fucking funny”, and the actor is also a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, the genius behind 2007’s Daniel Day-Lewis drama There Will be Blood. “What a fantastic director”, says Taylor-Johnson. “Boogie Nights. Pretty epic. It just captured that era so brilliantly. Great movie.”
Taylor-Johnson has gone on to work with some modern directing greats, including Christopher Nolan on 2020’s Tenet and Robert Eggers, who was at the helm of last year’s gothic chompy update of the 1922 classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. He also picked up a Golden Globe award for his role in Tom Ford’s 2016 thriller Nocturnal Animals.
Still only in his earlier moments of his career, this year he went from biting to trying not to get bitten in another directing great, Danny Boyle’s much-awaited third movie in the undead series, 28 Years Later.
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