The movie that made Aaron Taylor-Johnson fall in love with cinema: “Beyond the actors”
In the last few years, British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson has assimilated into Hollywood rather flawlessly, appearing in superhero movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Kraven the Hunter and massive action movies like Bullet Train.
For many of us, though, he’ll always be Robbie from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging – the bass-playing, cat-loving romantic interest in Gurinder Chadha’s beloved teen cringe comedy that taught a generation of women about the dangers of too much fake tan.
Taylor-Johnson has come a long way since then, with his role as John Lennon in the biopic Nowhere Boy helping to elevate his status in the industry as a promising leading star. As a result, he bagged the main role in the superhero comedy Kick-Ass, which was highly praised by most critics, apart from Roger Ebert. He admitted to being “hopelessly square”, calling the film “morally reprehensible”. Nevermind.
It’s hard to pinpoint Taylor-Johnson’s cinematic tastes from his list of acting credits, which moves between action movies and slightly more complex and artistically-driven titles like Nocturnal Animals (in which he gave an incredible performance) and Nosferatu. However, in 2010, he shed a bit of insight into his cinematic tastes, and we can only hope he has expanded his horizons in the 15 years that have passed, with Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, and Pulp Fiction all making it onto the list.
These are all great films, of course, but Taylor-Johnson was clearly fulfilling the ‘film bro’ stereotype back then, although he was only 20, so perhaps we can give him the benefit of the doubt. It was Pulp Fiction that really made the actor fall in love with cinema, though, something that happened when he was actually far too young to be watching Quentin Tarantino’s classic crime comedy-drama.
The early Pulp Fiction influence on Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s career
He revealed, “Pulp Fiction was probably one of the first films I ever saw that really kind of took effect on me. I was about four years old — obviously wasn’t supposed to be seeing that film; my sister kind of sneaked it out and we got to see it. She’s older than me.”
We can’t imagine what a four-year-old would get out of Pulp Fiction, but it seems Taylor-Johnson was interested in the world of cinema from a very young age. He continued, “That was something I always used to watch. I loved the scenes with John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson; when I was older I could understand a little more.”
“It was funny, me and my sister would have this little running thing where we’d know the lines to Ezekiel 25:17. My sister actually bought me a wallet that had ‘Bad Mother Fucker’ written on it. But yeah, 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,” the actor concluded.
Tarantino is reportedly set to make his next film his last, so if Taylor-Johnson wants to work with his directing icon, he’s only got one chance to make it happen.
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