Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron and more recently the hit Bullet Train opposite Brad Pitt, already has a filmography most actors would dream about.
But not him.
The 33-year-old tells Esquire, “There was Kick-Ass [in 2010] and then there was [2014’s] Godzilla and Avengers [in 2016], and all those things lined up for me. But I didn’t really care for them.”
He added, “I wanted, purely, to be with my babies. I didn’t want to be taken away from them. I battled with what that would be like.”
Taylor-Johnson and his director wife, Sam, are co-parents to four daughters, two from her previous marriage.
The actor went from playing the lead in the Spider-Man adjacent Kraven the Hunter for Sony to The Fall Guy for his Bullet Train director David Leitch, then into a remake of Nosferatu “with only twenty-four hours between each thing,” he explains.
“In my opinion, the actor that goes job to job becomes f****** boring,” the English actor says. “You know that someone’s going to pick you up, take you to work, do your makeup, tell you, ‘Here’s your mark. These are your lines. You’re f****** great!’ And on to the next job. F*** off.”
The former child actor says, “I’m sure people dream of that. If this is what you want to do, that’s great. It doesn’t feed my soul. I enjoy … the everyday stuff. Getting my kids ready in the mornings, taking them to school and activities … That feeds my soul.”
That said, there’s another potential job out there that could have Aaron’s number, or more accurately, the number 007. He’s rumored to be on the short list to succeed Daniel Craig as James Bond.
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