Aaron Taylor-Johnson says he ‘knew he’d be a young father’ in rare candid discussion about family

Aaron Taylor-Johnson has candidly revealed that he always “knew” he was going to be a “young father”.

The Kraven the Hunter star, 33, who shares four children with wife Sam Taylor-Johnson, 56, opened up about parenthood and his relationship with the director during an interview with Esquire.

According to Aaron, although he and Sam met on the set of Nowhere Boy, which she was directing, in 2008, and have since worked on multiple other projects together, their relationship isn’t rooted in “creative partnership”.

“I don’t think that’s accurate. Yeah, we worked - I met Sam as actor and director. I think we’re really great at collaborating. But that’s not why I fell in love with her,” he said.

Aaron, who was 18 when he met Sam, then 41, proposed a year later. They welcomed their first daughter, Wylda Rae, now 13, in July 2010 and their second daughter, Romy Hero, now 11,in January 2012. In June 2012, the pair, who also co-parent Sam’s daughters Angelica and Jessie, who she shares with ex-husband Jay Jopling, tied the knot.

According to Aaron, he knew even before he met his future wife, and then especially once he’d met Sam, that he was going to have a “big family”.

“I was going to have a big family. I knew I was going to be a young father. I knew I was going to have many kids,” he told Esquire of his thinking by the time he was 10 or 11.

However, according to the Avengers: Age of Ultron star, whose three youngest children live at home, it is still surprising to come to terms with being the father to teenagers.

“Teenagers, man,” he said. “I’ve got teenagers.”

The actor declined to discuss his family further, with Aaron telling the outlet that he was trying to be as “as honest as possible” and that he’d probably talked to the interviewer “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,” he said, of why he prefers to keep the details of his relationship private.

This is not the first time that Aaron has opened up about his relationship with Sam, and why it works despite their 23-year age gap.

“I don’t really analyse 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,” he told Mr Porter in 2017.

In 2019, Aaron described his wife as his “soulmate,” with the actor telling The Telegraph that he’d known “instantly” that Sam was the one he was meant to be with.

“I knew instantly with Sam that I’d found my soulmate,” he said. “I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person. I remember it very well, and a year to the day [after] I met her I proposed. I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child.”

The actor also condemned the scrutiny the couple’s age gap received while speaking to New York Magazine’s Vulture in 2017. “The attention was intrusive,” he told the outlet of the early days of their relationship. “But having to deal with that early in my career probably got me to a place where I can more quickly just go: ‘Oh, f*** it’ instead of wanting to rip someone’s head off for asking questions I don’t like.”

The British director has also opened up about the pair’s relationship, with Sam telling The Sunday Times in 2017 that she and Aaron “spend every minute of the day together”.