As one of the leading actors and directors of their respective generations — with Aaron Taylor-Johnson recently reportedly offered the new James Bond role, and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic being one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year — it’s no surprise the couple met on a film set. What was — and remains — surprising is their age gap. He’s now 33 and she’s 57.
The two met while filming Nowhere Boy, where Aaron played a teenage John Lennon and Sam directed. At the time Aaron was 18 and Sam was 42, so when they were pictured cuddling up to one another before officially confirming they were dating it raised a few eyebrows.
"I managed to hold off really until almost the end of the film. Maybe feelings were there but un-acted upon. The thing is, we had quite a psychic link when we were working together. I knew from a flicker of an eyelash what kind of performance I was going to get. I felt that link almost from day one of meeting him,” the director told The Guardian in an interview about their budding on set romance.
She also told Harper’s Bazaar that it was actually Aaron who did the pursuing. “As soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed.” With Aaron later explaining that he felt as if he had “lived a life far beyond that of most of my contemporaries” and as a result didn’t relate to anyone his age.
Despite public disapproval, a year later the couple got engaged with Aaron proposing “a year to the minute” after they met. He was 22 and she was 45 when they married. “I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person. I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child.” In July 2010 they welcomed their first daughter, Wylda Rae and their second, Romy Hero, in 2012. That same year they married at Babington House in Somerset, where they decided to take each other's names, which was something that Aaron told The Guardian was "so important" to him.
Still, their age gap has continued to be a hot topic, and is a conversation that has followed them even after having children, getting married and supporting each other through two frightening cancer diagnoses — Sam was treated for colon cancer in 1997 at the age of 30 (before she met Aaron) and then was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. “I'm an old soul and she's a young soul,” Aaron told The Sunday Independent. Meanwhile Sam in a separate interview with The Sunday Independent also explained: “Going through all the crap I've been through, I don't really listen to other people's opinions. I just follow my heart and my instincts." She added: "People like to talk about it. I'm like, 'But it works better than my last marriage.' It lasted longer than a lot of my friends' marriages." Sam was previously married to art dealer Jay Jopling and they have two children, Angelica, 26, and Jessie, 16.
The secret to their success, having recently celebrated their 15 year anniversary with matching neck tattoos, and renewing their wedding vows just two years ago, is their love of home life. In an interview with The Guardian, the director said of the pair's domestic setup: “The great thing about Aaron is that he's happy not working and being at home with the kids while I work. We're actually fighting over it. He's like, "No no, I like being an at-home dad, doing the cooking and the school runs."
“Being in an amazing relationship, having come out of a difficult one, it felt so good. And I feel like that stability has enabled me to get on with doing this momentous project.”
It’s something that Aaron has reiterated, telling Esquire that, “getting my kids ready in the mornings, taking them to school and activities—that’s plenty. That feeds my soul.” The family moved from Los Angeles to the bucolic countryside of Somerset in 2022. Aaron also addressed the age gap once again. “I've probably talked to you more about my kids and Sam than I have with anybody. I've got really nothing to hide, and I'm secure in what we have. But I'm not going to unlock things that are actually precious to me. I don't really analyze our relationship. I just know that it works. I just feel secure and loved and safe. We have this very deep connection. We're just in sync.”
With both of them about to undertake huge career moves, with Aaron set to go stratospheric if he agrees to the James Bond role, which has famously been played by Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery, and Sam’s biggest movie to date releasing later this year, the two will unfortunately have to step outside of family life and back into the limelight in a big way. But if the last 15 years are anything to go by, they’ll be there for one another through it all.
