A SUMMER afternoon in New York's West Village, a warm day fast turning hotter, and inside Buvette GastrothĆØqueāa tiny bistro so perfectly Parisian that thereās another one in the Quartier Pigalle, a few blocks from the Moulin RougeāAaron Taylor-Johnson is scooping up ruddy- pink globs of steak tartare and packing them like wet sand onto little ellipses of toasted bread, one bite at a time.
The size of the space means weāre out in the open, visible. His eyes dart to the front door every time it opens. His body language says heās ready to be recognized, to be spottedānot waiting for it but scanning, steeling for it. It doesnāt happen. Either everyoneās being chill about his presence or nobody associates the guy at the table with the things heās been in. Youāve definitely seen him in things, though. That was him in Avengers: Age of Ultron, as a mutant dying a plot-twist death. That was him in Tenet, behind a massive Special Forces beard. Or you may have watched the long scene in Nocturnal Animals in which a redneck serial killer torments Jake Gyllenhaal and his familyājust unmanning poor Jakeāand thought, halfway through, Waitāis that the kid from Kick-Ass?

Which it was. He looks different in practically every movie. Mustache, no mustache. Weird hair, less-weird hair. Bulking up, slimming down. A one-man Guess Who? board. Today, his look says Young Mafia Don Bound for Miami. He futzes with a couple gold chains while he talks. They slip in and out of the collar of his seventies-dude tan polo shirt, which matches his pants, which match the suit jacket draped over his chair. His hair is longish, curly, a little sweaty. Heās lean, but his arms are like cinder blocks.
Weāve been on the record for five minutes, maybe ten, and already weāre getting into real shit. The work of parenting, the work of work. That impossible balance. The struggle to be present. He and his wife, director Sam Taylor-Johnson, are coparents to four kids, all girls, two from her previous marriage, three still at homeāages sixteen, thirteen, and eleven. āTeenagers, man,ā says Aaron, who just turned thirty-three this week. āIāve gotĀ teenagers.ā
Last year, the Taylor-Johnson clan relocated to England, and heās been explaining why. He and Sam are both from around London, and after Covid-cocooning in California, they felt the pull of home. They saw a window when they could move back without screwing up the kidsā academic lives unduly. And they both had work in the UK. Sam was directing the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopicĀ Back to Black;Ā Aaron had signed up to play an iconic Marvel villain inĀ Kraven the Hunter,Ā plus āanother couple jobs that sort of set me in England for some time.āĀ
AfterĀ Kraven,Ā he shotĀ The Fall Guyāreteaming withĀ Bullet TrainĀ director David Leitch on a reboot of the eighties TV series, with Ryan Gosling as the titular Guyāand then went to Prague to be in Robert EggersāsĀ Nosferatu,Ā with someĀ KravenĀ reshoots in between. So maybe thatās all he means by āanother couple jobs.ā
Except thereās talk that heās booked, or is about to book, another fairly giant gig. He will not discuss it, not right now, but the rumor is that heās the top contender to succeed Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond. That he crushed a secret screen test for franchise doyenne Barbara Broccoli last winter. The day we meetāmid-June, a month before the Screen Actors Guild joins the Writers Guild on strikeāthe oddsmakers at Ladbrokes have him at 13 to 8 to get the job. In other words, thereās about a 38 percent chance that Aaron Taylor-Johnsonās days of going unrecognized are numberedāin tiny French bistros or anywhere else.Ā

THATĀ Kraven/Fall Guy/NosferatuĀ runāthree different movies, three very different characters, āwith only twenty-four hours between each thingāāis not the way he usually likes to work. āIn my opinion, the actor that goes job to job becomes fucking boring,ā he says. āYou know that someoneās going to pick you up, take you to work, do your makeup, tell you, āHereās your mark. These are your lines. Youāre fucking great!ā And on to the next job.Ā Fuck off.Ā Iām sure people dream of that. If this is what you want to do, thatās great. It doesnāt feed my soul. I enjoy the normality of things, the everyday stuff. Getting my kids ready in the mornings, taking them to school and activitiesāthatās plenty.Ā ThatĀ feeds my soul.ā
Centering that part of his life meant saying no a lotāsomething he says he began doing about a decade ago, not long after he first broke through and began getting cast in the kinds of movies that can lead to even bigger movies, if youāre not careful āThere wasĀ Kick-Ass,ā he says, ā and then there wasĀ GodzillaĀ and Avengers, and all those things lined up for me. But I didnāt really care for them.ā He was getting offers to do more of that stuff for more money. He was up for roles āthat nobody knows aboutābig, huge franchises that were in play.ā But by then he and Sam had two small children. The decision not to keep going down that blockbuster road wasnāt hard. āI wanted, purely, to be with my babies,ā he says. āI didnāt want to be taken away from them. I battled with what that would be like.ā Looking back, he says, āI would say I was probably not ready to be in that position anywayāit was too early. But yeah, I also slightly didnāt give a fuck.ā So for a while, he did only one movie a yearā supporting roles, or roles in smaller, weirder films, or both. And when he wasnāt doing that, he was at home with the kids.
They live in Somerset now. They bought an old farmhouse property in 2010 and, after putting their Hollywood Hills villa up for sale for close to $7.5 million, settled there full-time in 2022. The grass stains on Aaronās bright-white Air Force 1ās are a trace of the English countryside.Ā CountrysideĀ is relative, of course: The nearby town of Bruton has been called āthe new Notting Hill,ā a hot retreat for well-to-do Londoners, and the Taylor-Johnsonsā neighbors in the area reportedly include fashion designers Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, theater impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh, and art moguls Iwan and Manuela Wirth.Ā
But thereās country life to be had out there if you want it, and Taylor-Johnson has discovered that he does. āThatās what I love doing,ā he says. āI have pigs. I have bees!āĀ
Animals to meet. Tree houses to build for the kids. Some kind of luxe yet farmhouse-y kitchen, probably. He likes taking care of others; it carries over into his professional relationships. When you ask people what itās like to work with him, you get a lot of stories about actorly dedication but plenty of others about carbohydrate-rich foods as a love language.

āWhen he bakes a cherry pie,ā saysĀ Nocturnal AnimalsĀ director Tom Ford, āitās the most perfectly delicious cherry pie that youāve ever had.ā
He baked sourdough bread for Brian Tyree Henry. āI was like, āIām never going to be able to repay you in bread, because I donāt fucking understand how yeast works,ā ā Henry says.
They didĀ Bullet TrainĀ together, playing hitmen who identify as twin brothers. Taylor-Johnson was Tangerine and Henry was Lemon. āThis fool went and got an actual lemon tree,ā Henry says, āand sat it between our trailers. Over the course of the movie, we could watch and nurture this tree. I was like, āWhat the fuck are you thinking?ā But he got me to water this plant, spray the leaves. Thatās Aaron. Heās just like, āWeāre going to figure out how to take care of this together.ā ā
Bullet TrainĀ was a supporting roleāhe and Henry were two of several eccentric murderers chasing Brad Pitt around that trainābut it played like a commercial for the next phase of Taylor-Johnsonās career, the actor equivalent of being āOpen to Workā on LinkedIn. He hangs off the back of the speeding train wearing most of a three-piece suit (a very James Bond image, it has to be said). At one point, he and Pitt throw down in the cafĆ© car. At another, a character played by Channing Tatum watches him pass by in the aisle and marvels, āGodāheās got a great walk.ā Itās like one leading man recognizing another in the wild.

THE CHECK comes. Taylor-Johnson won't let Esquire get it. We decide to roll up to the High Line, grab some coffee, keep talking.
He really does have a great walk. A cool-guy walk: big, loping strides. As we make our way up to Fourteenth Street, he talksāin short bursts, falling cautiously silent whenever anyone passes us on the sidewalk, already employing high-level blockbuster OPSECāabout what made him accept another comic-book role six years afterĀ Ultron. āI mean, quite honestly, I thought Iād actually been done with these sorts of movies,ā he says.
ButĀ Bullet TrainĀ was a Sony Pictures project, as isĀ Kraven,Ā and whenĀ KravenĀ director J. C. Chandor told Sony he wanted to make an origin story, with a younger actor in the leadāa part that had reportedly been offered, over the years, to everyone from Keanu Reeves to Adam Driverāthe studio suggested the guy theyād been seeing in the dailies from Leitchās film. āWhen a guy can hold up his end of the tennis match with Brad Pitt,ā says Tom Rothman, the chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainmentās Motion Picture Group, āyou should pay attention.āĀ
Taylor-Johnson thought the script had potential, but he wasnāt sold until he started reading the comic books. Kraven started out as a blowhard big-game hunter in leopard tights, one of many self-important antagonists foiled again and again by Peter Parker. In 1987, a writer named J. M. DeMatteis took him somewhere different. Kraven is canonically Russian, born Sergei Kravinoff in Volgograd. Thinking about Dostoyevsky, and also Hemingway, DeMatteis wrote one of the great Marvel stories of the era, āKravenās Last Hunt,ā in which Kraven fakes Spideyās death, assumes his identity, spares his life, and finally commits suicide by rifle.

Chandorās movie is set before Kraven and Spider-Manās first meeting; itās about young Sergeiās relationship with his gangster father, played by Russell Crowe. But Taylor-Johnson and Chandor both said the characterās grim comic-book fate defined their approach to the film. āSony probably doesnāt want me to lead with this,ā Chandor says, ābut the story is a tragedy. When the final credits roll on this film, if youāve been paying attention, you wonāt have the feeling that this is all going to end great.ā
Taylor-Johnson understands that if this one doesnāt do well, he won’t get the chance to play out Kravenās story to the bitter end. But he also understands that heās been entrusted with something extrinsically valuable. The state of play here: Back in 1999, long before the dawn of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Disneyās acquisition of Marvel Entertainment, Sony Pictures acquired the rights to Spider-Man and hundreds of other Spider-Man-related characters, including Kraven. Years later, in 2015, Sony and the now-mighty Marvel Studios struck a deal to coproduce Spider-Man films set in the MCU. The most recent of those,Ā Spider-Man: No Way Home,Ā has grossed almost $2 billion worldwide; itās the third-biggest superhero movie of all time, after the past twoĀ Avengers.

But so far, the success of those movies (and of Sonyās animated Spider-Verse films, widely considered the finest artistic achievements of the superhero-movie age) hasnāt guaranteed an audience for the movies Sonyās been making about all those other Spider-Man-related characters it owns the rights to. The Venom films, with Tom Hardy as another Spider- nemesis, have pulled in more than $1 billion worldwide, butĀ MorbiusĀ (Jared Leto accidentally-on-purpose turns himself into a vampire) was an instant social-media punchline. Sony would clearly like the cinematic universe itās building around the Spider-mythos to become a money machine on par with the MCU; it hasnāt happened yet. But positioning these films as an edgier alternative to Disneyās bright and fanciful Marvel films is one way to set them apart. Which is whyĀ Kravenrebrands a legacy villain as a violent antihero, and why the shot of Kraven biting off a dudeās nose is in the trailer.Ā
Weāve procured a couple double espressos over ice from a coffee stall. Taylor-Johnson pays once again, then weaves through meandering tourists toward a spot he likesāa little amphitheater just off the main drag, with wooden benches facing a window that overlooks the river of traffic on Tenth Avenue. A band of laughing high school kids settles in a few rows ahead of us, toting backpacks and skateboardsāa sample of the target audience forĀ Kraven,oblivious to Taylor-Johnsonās presence. āMy kids and I would come here sometimes and do a bit of parkour,ā he says. āIāve got videos of us doing that.āĀ
Canonically, Kraven is big and near-shirtless most of the time. Taylor- Johnson says he looked at the comics and thought,Ā Huhāthe costume is my stomach and my arms.Ā He trained heavy for months. Heās around 170 or 180 now, he says, but at his supervillain peak, he was 200 pounds. And to be believable as a hunter who takes on animal qualities to out-beast his prey, he learned to run like a quadruped.
But he also tried to build Kraven from the inside out, pulling from real people whose relationships with animals mirrored some aspect of the characterāa kind of antiheroās journey. āYou just grab little things,ā Taylor-Johnson says, āand they rub off, in ways, and they come in handy.ā He stalked deer with a hunter to understand āthe emotional turmoil and the sense of guiltā that come with ending a life, studied the life and art of the late wildlife photographer Peter Beard, and spent time with the controversial conservationist Damian Aspinall, whom he describes as āa punk-anarchist, sort of Kraven- esque characterā motivated by a hatred of the worldās cruelty to animals.Ā
If this seems like a lot of attention to pay to the inner life of a guy whose motivation is to put Spider-Manās head on the wall like a prize mooseāor like an actorās attempt to make himself feel as if heās crafting an actual performance in a movie that chiefly needs him for his absāwell, okay, maybe it is. But it matters to him: āWhen you say stuff like āIām the greatest hunter of all time,ā youāve got to know deep within your being that itās coming from a place of reality and depth, and feels like itās possible and plausible.ā

ONE THING about acting is that the script is not the scene; the scene is you, embodying the character, finding the story in the moment. Every good actor learns this sooner or later. Taylor-Johnson learned it by watching Jackie Chan.
The movie wasĀ Shanghai Knights,Ā with Chan and Owen Wilson. Taylor- Johnson, around twelve at the time, was making his first American film, playing a resourceful street urchin named Charlie who wears a familiar-looking bowler hat and later reveals that his last name is Chaplin. Chan would roll up to set in the morning with his stunt team and figure out then and there which chandelier heād swing from, which chair heād break over whose head. āHe was daring and fearlessly pushing boundaries,ā Taylor-Johnson says. āPeople donāt do things, because theyāre too afraid of looking like a foolāand that cuts out so much creativity.āĀ
By the time he worked with Chan, heād been acting for half his life. TV commercials at six. Shakespeare in the West End at eightāMacbeth,Ā with Rufus Sewell as the hot-blooded king and Taylor-Johnson as Macduffās son, getting murdered onstage three nights a week in a scene that also called for him to be naked in the bathtub. āBollockĀ naked,ā he emphasizes. āWeāre not talking wearing swimming trunksāI was fully naked.ā Was this, yāknow,Ā weird? āListen, I think in hindsight you have to unpack a lot from what my childhood was, in an adult industry, in a time likeāā He pauses. āDid I feel uncomfortable? Yeah, I probably did.ā He doesnāt want to talk about it further with the tape rolling. He says heās already unpacked it privately, and this isnāt therapy; itās theĀ Kraven the HunterĀ press tour.

After Shanghai Knights,Ā people out in L. A. wanted to meet him. āI was pushed in front of agents and managers,ā he says. āThe whole fucking Disney lot.Ā Hereās your path. You can be a fuckingāā And then he pauses again, still not sure how to fill in the blank, what fucking thing the L. A. people thought they could make him into.
He says he was overwhelmed. He told his parents he didnāt want to stop acting but didnāt want to be the thing these L. A. people wanted him to be, either. He adds, āI think I smelt the bullshit. You felt like you were being sold. I went, āThis aināt for me. This is smoke up my ass.ā ā
Heās learned over time to trust those instincts, and when he starts to feel anxious or stressed or doubtful, itās usually because heās gone against his gut. āYouāre just constantly trying to fine-tune what is right for you,ā he says, āand fuck what everyone else thinks and the judgment outside.ā
He left school at fifteen to chase acting jobs full-time. He auditioned for a million projects, got to know all the British casting directors, ran lines in waiting rooms with people whoād go on to be recognizable names: āIt was me and Nick Hoult, it was Dan Kaluuya, it was Jack OāConnell.ā They read for the same parts, hung out and grabbed drinks afterward. Learning who booked which gig was instructive; you could see a logic behind it, he says. āYouād be like, āOh my GodāAndrew Garfieldās perfect for this.ā Or āI donāt know why Iām hereāthis is Jackās job.ā That teaches you that youāre not fucking right for everything.ā
Ā

He thought about drama school but was told to come back with more experience. āI was like, āExperience? Iāve fucking traveled the fucking world already,ā ā he says. So he decided to try L. A. again, where he found himself auditioning alongside many of those same actors from those London casting rooms: āA little pocket of British people, all hiding under American accents.āĀ
He slept on sofas, watched his savings burn up, got good at first impressions. āYou walked into a room and you needed to be the person they thought about for the rest of the day. You had to make āem fucking fall in love with you. Itās a bit like speed dating, I suppose. And you also got used to doing a hundred of those, and maybe one of those youād get. Rejection, rejection, rejection. All the time.ā After about six months, possibly less, he was out of money and on his way to LAX with a flight to London booked. Thatās when he got the call to read forĀ Kick-Ass.Ā
They were shooting that one in London in 2008 when he was asked to read forĀ Nowhere Boy,Ā about the angry young John Lennon, pre-Beatles. He studied Lennonās accent via YouTube and ducked out between setups to do the audition, and thatās how he met his wife. She was forty-one and he was eighteen. One year later, he proposed. Soon after, she was pregnant with their first daughter. They married in 2012, took each otherās names.Ā
Sam was already famous when they metāone of the so-called Young British Artists, a contemporary of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, a friend of Elton John. When the two got together, their age gap was a source of minor controversy; Aaron has been referred to as Samās ātoyboyā in the pages ofĀ The Mirror, The Spectator,Ā and theĀ Daily Mail.

At Buvette, Taylor-Johnson will talk about his family, but when I touch on his relationship, itās like a silent alarm goes off. SinceĀ Nowhere Boy,Ā he and Sam have worked on other projects together, like the 2018 adaptation ofĀ A Million Little Piecesāwhich they cowrote and Sam directed, with Aaron as James Freyāand the video for R.E.M.ās āĆberlin,ā featuring Aaron dancing balletically and sometimes frenetically through the streets of Shoreditch, bounding over traffic bollards, alarming pedestrians.Ā
But he prickles when itās suggested that their thing works because itās rooted in creative partnership. āI donāt know,ā he says. āI donāt think thatās accurate. Yeah, we workedāI met Sam as actor and director. I think weāre really great at collaborating. But thatās not why I fell in love with her.ā It was another one of those gut instincts, he saysāhe knew right away when he met Sam but alsoĀ beforeĀ they met, by the time he was ten or elevenāthat āI 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.āĀ
At some point, the wall comes up and we donāt talk about Sam anymore. He hasnāt said a whole lot, but it feels like heās drawing a line. āIām trying to be as honest as possible,ā he says. āIāve probably talked to you more about my kids and Sam than I have with anybody. Iāve got really nothing to hide, and Iām secure in what we have. But Iām not going to unlock things that are actually precious to me.ā

HE SEEMS to be bracing himself for whatever's coming next. The end of the hanging-out-at-home years, any anonymity heās been able to preserve by stepping away from Big IP. āIām at a place where the exposureās about to come again,ā he says.
We meet for the second time on a Saturday morning at Gemma, the restaurant off the lobby of the Bowery Hotel, where Taylor-Johnson is staying while heās in New York. Itās early enough that we have the whole place to ourselvesājust us, the waitstaff, and Thelonious Monk plunking away on the sound systemābut when Taylor- Johnson rolls in, heās already been to the gym. This is his first bigĀ Kraven interview, and heās still figuring out how to talk about the movie as well as how comfortable he is talking about himself in a Kraven context.
āYou canāt step into this role, you canāt step into what this franchise is, with a fucking half-assed,Ā Letās see how it goesĀ attitude,ā he says. āYou have to be mentally prepared for what could come with that. I think Iām secure in my life now to know that Iām happy to deal with that. I donāt think I was probably ready to invite that into my life earlier on.ā
Heās made it clear that heās talking aboutĀ Kraven,Ā but itās hard to shake the sense that heās referring to something that lies beyond that, something larger, more life-upending. It feels like the right moment to gently inquire, once more, if thereās anything in the pipeline besides what weāve already discussed.Ā
He says noāheās focused onĀ Kraven,Ā getting it out there and making sure it becomes what it has the potential to become. āWhat comes from that could generate many different conversations.āĀ

There are others who see his future in less ambiguous terms, I point out. Then I start the next sentence with the word Ladbrokes, and as soon as I do, weāre talking over each other, past each other, as if heās pretending not to hear me.
āBut this is the thing, right?ā Taylor-Johnson says as I stammer about what 13 to 8 means percentage-wise. āAs Iāve already told you, I have to go by the beat of my own drum. Itās my own path, what feels intuitive to me. Iāve never made a decision based on other peopleās perspectives, or their judgments, or their expectations. You lose your fucking mind if you do that. Your sense of worth and soul is gone. You need to understand what is integral to you and what feels right, and youāve got to stay on track with whatās present in front of you. Kraven is whatās in front of me.ā
And he says, not for the first time since weāve been talking, that he never really knows what the next job is until it appears, and he reiterates that heās never wanted to be one of those actors who just go from job to job, because you donāt learn anything about the world that way.
I know you can only say so much, I say.
āItās not really for me to say anything,ā he responds.
Itās not for you to say, as in itās not decided? Or do you really not know?
No answer. Then the polite, Cāmon, bro, I canāt talk about this right now answer: āIāve spent two years making Kraven. So all that hard work we put into trying to get that to where it isāthatās where Iām at right now.ā It wouldnāt be fair, in other words, to use the platform of this conversation to talk about whatever else he might be doing in the future.
Is it exciting to consider it, though?
āI just focus,ā Taylor-Johnson says, āon the things I can have in my hands right now. Whatās in front of me right now.ā
Awkward pause. Even Thelonious seems self-conscious. Neither of us has uttered the words āJames Bondā or ā007ā in this exchangeāitās like weāre talking circumspectly about an actual secret agentābut itās worth noting that at any point Taylor-Johnson could have shut this down by saying, āNo, mate, Iām not fucking playing James Bond,ā and he never does.

Does that mean, I ask, that I should bet on Henry Cavill?
Staring at his lap, Taylor-Johnson says, āI mean, if youāre a betting man. . .ā
I honestly donāt know what to believe. As of July, a few weeks after this breakfast took place, Ladbrokes had lengthened the odds of him being Bond to 11 to 4, which indicates about a 27 percent chance. Meanwhile, another chiseled British actor, James Nortonābest known as the psychopathic killer from the BBC seriesĀ Happy Valleyāhas surged into second place, passing Cavill.Ā
So perhaps Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the next Bond. Or perhaps by the time you read this, the role will have gone to Mr. Bean. I donāt know. What I do believe is that if the Bond decision ends up being his to make, he wonāt decide to do it purely because you donāt turn down James Bond. And I almost kind of believe him when he says, āI could probably also easily just fucking retire, and give it all up, and just enjoy being with my kids and being in the countryside.ā
That was the topic he seemed most excited to talk about, on both those days. The house in the country. The bees. āThese are new things in my life,ā he says. āThese are rare, little new things.āĀ
Theyāre wild bees, as it happens. Youāve got to work your way in with wild bees. Build that trust so theyāll let you open up their house, have a look around, maybe harvest some honey.Ā
āLuckily, I havenāt been stung,ā he says. āTheyāre pretty calm. I stay calm, and they can read that energy.āĀ
He doesnāt usually wear a protective suit, and he doesnāt use smoke to keep them under control. Itās not beekeeping, he says; itās bee observing. He tries not to mess with their process. He left an empty hive out where they could find it, and the bees showed up. And when winter came, he didnāt leave sugar water out for themāhe just let them do what they were going to do.
If this sounds like a metaphor, fair enough. Sometimes you let the universe take its course, and then itās spring and thereās honey to harvest. But thereās also red meat to be had out in the world, if you decide to go looking for it.
This story originally appeared on Esquire.
Story: Alex Pappademas
Photos: Norman Jean Roy
Styling: Bill Mullen
Hair: Thom Priano
Grooming: Valissa Yoe for Tom Ford
Production: Boom Productions
Tailoring: Todd Thomas
Creative Direction: Nick Sullivan
Design Direction: Rockwell Harwood
Visuals Direction: James Morris
Executive Director, Entertainment: Randi Peck
Executive Producer, Video: Dorenna Newton
Photographed On Location At Bannerman Castle, Beacon, New York.