A wholehearted, physical actor who gives every part more than it asks for. Put him at the centre of a big film and he goes anonymous; hand him a smaller part as a man too pleased with himself, and he is worth watching.
Fi1m perspective
Aaron Taylor-Johnson does nothing by halves, and it is not always a compliment. In Kraven the Hunter (2024) he is fit, scowling and committed from the first scene to the last, and the film rewards him with a leather waistcoat and almost nothing to say. That has been the shape of his big-studio work for a decade. He works hard in every one of them, and most of them give him nothing to work with.
He started at six, and the first performance most people noticed was John Lennon in Nowhere Boy (2009), for Sam Taylor-Wood. Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass (2010) gave him the title role and an audience, and Kick-Ass 2 (2013), without Vaughn directing, gave him a loud, flat film in which his Dave was one of three stories that never met. The blockbusters followed: Godzilla (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Tenet (2020), Bullet Train (2022). The complaint made of Godzilla and repeated since is that the man at the centre of these films is anonymous, and our own experience of Kraven says the same. Nocturnal Animals (2016), in which he played the villain Ray Marcus, was the turn towards the sort of part that suits him, and he has been more interesting to watch since.
What suits him is a man who is pleased with himself, and the smaller the part, the better it goes. In The Fall Guy (2024), his second film with David Leitch, his action star Tom Ryder is a one-note vanity turn, funny for about half the time it is on screen, which is a fair return on a role that exists to be laughed at. Robert Eggers's Nosferatu (2024) casts him as Friedrich Harding, a man of business who believes none of it, and the script is unkind to him for that. Taylor-Johnson does not soften him to win us back, and the film is better for it.
28 Years Later (2025) is the best use anyone has made of him in the films we have reviewed. He plays Jamie, a father taking his son across the causeway for a first kill, who enjoys the mainland more than a father should. We caught ourselves disliking him before the film had asked us to, and it was the pleasure that did it: Taylor-Johnson lets Jamie relish a trip that is meant to be about the boy, and it was the relish, not the killing, that made us uneasy. Boyle knows exactly what that unease is for.
He has spent fifteen years being handed films to carry, and he carries them the way he carries everything, with his whole body and a straight face. He is more use when he is handed the man you are not supposed to trust. Cast him as that, and leave the waistcoat in the cupboard.
Biography
Aaron Perry Taylor-Johnson (né Johnson) is an English actor. Born on 13 June 1990 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, he began performing as a child actor in films including Shanghai Knights (2003), The Illusionist (2006) and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008). He had a breakthrough role as John Lennon in the biopic Nowhere Boy (2009), directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he married in 2012.
Taylor-Johnson portrayed the title character in Kick-Ass (2010) and its 2013 sequel, and appeared in Savages (2012), Anna Karenina (2012), Godzilla (2014) and as Pietro Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Nocturnal Animals (2016). Subsequent roles include Tenet (2020), Bullet Train (2022), The Fall Guy (2024), Nosferatu (2024), Kraven the Hunter (2024) and 28 Years Later (2025).
