Aaron Taylor-Johnson, AKA TikTok’s forever white boy of the month and our rumoured new 007, has hit out at critics of his relationship with his much older wife Sam Taylor-Johnson, who he met when he was 18 and she was 42.
There are precious few things that the internet can agree on, but one notion that appears to have inspired a sense of unity on TikTok is the collective loathing fans have for the Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging star’s controversial relationship.
Aaron, who is now 33, has had enough with the scrutiny. He said in an interview with Rolling Stone UK that he was actually just more mature than the average kid when he met Sam, who is now 57.
“What you gotta realise is that what most people were doing in their twenties, I was doing when I was 13,” he said.
“You’re doing something too quickly for someone else? I don’t understand that. What speed are you supposed to enjoy life at? It’s bizarre to me.”
Aaron spoke about Sam’s directing, and how he feels like she’s a “wonderful storyteller” — however, he’s hesitant to work on films together because of the criticism of their relationship.
“There’s a protectiveness that I feel; I think it’s really difficult,” he said.
“There’s also part of me that feels like if something didn’t work, I’m the one that’s responsible.”
The reason this relationship attracts so much controversy is because it embodies the great age gap debate in a pretty visceral sense — Aaron met Sam when he was a teenager in 2009, while auditioning for Nowhere Boy, and the two struck up a connection pretty immediately. Sam was the director of the film, and 23 years older than him, which left fans with a bitter taste in their mouths.
The pair married in 2012 when Aaron was 22 and Sam was 46, and insist that they waited until after Nowhere Boy to properly pursue their relationship.
“We were very professional through the entire film,” Aaron told Harper’s Bazaar in 2019.
“No funny business at all.”
“And as soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me,” Sam added. “We had never been on a date, or even kissed.”
“And a year to the minute after we met, exactly one year to the minute, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me,” Aaron said.
Now, Aaron shares two daughters with Sam. He also step-parents two children from her previous marriage — the older of which is 27.
Look, Aaron — like any person — can date who he wants.
But I have to say, believing you’re just more mature than other teens, and that’s why your relationship with an adult two decades your senior works, is… well, not it.
If a male director canoodled with his 18-year-old female star, we’d have some thoughts.
