Sam Taylor-Johnson ‘can’t fathom’ the fascination around her 24-year age-gap marriage
She discussed tabloid interest in her relationship while promoting ‘Back to Black’
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Your support makes all the difference.Sam Taylor-Johnson has admitted that she “can’t fathom” why people are fascinated by her marriage to a man 23 years her junior.
The director, 57, has been in a relationship with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 33, since meeting on the set of the John Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy, back in 2009.
Now, over a decade into their union, which has seen the pair get married and have two children, the director has admitted people still are fascinated by their age gap.
“I guess that interest was more when we got together, which was now 14 years – at the beginning, was quite intense,” Taylor-Johnson admitted on BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life.
“And that sort of fascination, because he’s younger than me, which you know, we couldn’t really fathom the fascination. But I guess it’s sort of gone away a little bit.
“Mostly when I’m doing press and things like this it sort of resurges a little bit. But yeah, I guess people want to understand things when they can’t.
“They want to pick apart when they can’t fathom what a certain love story that doesn’t fit in a box is.”
Taylor-Johnson’s thoughts on the fascination surrounding the relationship come after she was asked about it from a cultural point of view earlier this month.
The director, who was previously married to art dealer, Jay Jopling, 60, stressed that even though there are more than 20 years between her and her significant other, they never notice a difference in terms of cultural frames of reference or interest.
“No, [the age gap] never does [show up there]. I mean, it’s coming up now because you’re asking,” she admitted to Guardian Saturday.
“And it comes up on the outside perspective of people who don’t know us, because I guess people will always.
“We’re a bit of an anomaly, but it’s that thing: after 14 years you just think, surely by now it doesn’t really matter?”
A recent survey on age-gap relationships found that in the US, just 0.4 percent of all married couples involve a woman who is more than 20 years older than her male spouse.
Meanwhile, relationships between men who are over 20 years older than their female spouses account for one percent of heterosexual marital unions.
But Taylor-Johnson said that any cynicism surrounding a relationship with a man so much younger than herself did not enter her mind when she got together with Taylor-Johnson.
She said: “If I had been cynical for a second, it wouldn’t have worked. If I had questioned anything, it would never have worked. I’m quite instinctual. I’ve gone feet-first into everything in my life. I’m always, ‘This seems amazing’, and I jump straight in and go through the experience, whether good or bad.
“It’s definitely a ‘f***it, let’s go with it’ approach. And I’m a great believer that the heart overrides everything. Love conquers all.”
Taylor-Johnson has recently been hitting the headlines thanks to her new biographical film, Back to Black, which details the real-life story behind Amy Winehouse’s album of the same name.
She made her recent BBC revelations about her age-gap relationship while discussing the interest that surrounded Winehouse because of her very public battle with addiction, admitting that it was on nowhere near the same scale.
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