There Are So Many Weird Things About Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Marriage

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson's marriage to Sam Taylor-Johnson has endured the test of time — at least by Hollywood's standards. But "The Avengers: Age of Ultron" actor and the "Fifty Shades of Grey" director haven't exactly achieved couple-goals status among the public. That's because their relationship has displayed no shortage of eyebrow-raising aspects, the main one being their age gap. However, it isn't just the 23 years that separate Aaron from the London artist-turned-filmmaker that got people talking.

For many, the main issue is that the "Kick-Ass" actor was barely of age when he met the 40-something mother of two. Making matters more complicated, Sam was still married. She got divorced shortly after and wasted no time. Even though Aaron was a teenager, he and Sam got engaged and welcomed a child in under two years of crossing paths. Social media users had lots to say about how fast the relationship moved. The couple was unfazed and continued to show the world they were in it for the long haul, tying the knot shortly after their second daughter was born.

At that point, Aaron became a proud stepfather to Sam's daughters, the oldest of whom was just a handful of years younger than him. The family has been inseparable ever since — literally. Sam and Aaron take pride in needing to be together every second of the day, which many find weird. Again, they don't care. Even though their relationship is unconventional — and, frankly, strange at times — Sam and Aaron have stood together against all criticism.

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Born in June 1990, Aaron Taylor-Johnson was 18 when he met his wife. His path crossed with Sam Taylor-Johnson's in 2008, when he auditioned to play John Lennon in her directorial debut, "Nowhere Boy." Sam was 41. However, their relationship didn't turn romantic until after filming had wrapped up. "We were very professional through the entire film," Aaron told Harper's Bazaar in 2019. "No funny business at all." But the chemistry was very obviously there. "Everyone on set knew," Sam said.

They made their engagement public at the film's U.K. premiere in the fall of 2009. Aaron was still a teenager, having celebrated his 19th birthday earlier that year. Their 23-year age gap wasn't well-received by the public, particularly given how young Aaron was. "The age difference isn't technically the issue, just the age he was WHEN it all [went] down," one Reddit user argued. But the Taylor-Johnsons have defended their major age gap.

In 2019, Aaron argued he'd had plenty of life experience by the time he met Sam. "I worked in an adult environment from an early age; I had open, direct conversations with directors, producers, actors, where my opinions would be valued and matter. I grew up pretty quickly," he told The Telegraph. According to Sam, the age gap never comes up in their relationship — except by others. "It comes up on the outside perspective of people who don't know us," she told The Guardian in 2024.

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson wasted no time. A year after meeting, he popped the question to Sam Taylor-Johnson. "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," he said in the Harper's Bazaar interview. Just like that, he delivered on the promise he made before they'd even gone out together at all. "As soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed," Sam said.

Sam and Aaron didn't put the brakes on. Months after announcing their engagement, they became a family. In July 2010, the couple welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Wylda Rae. Sam was 43, and Aaron was 20. They waited almost no time to expand the brood. A year and a half later, they welcomed their second daughter, Romy, in January 2012. They wed that June, with Sam and Aaron changing their last names to Taylor-Johnson. 

As with everything surrounding their relationship, people had a lot to say about the pace at which it moved. It bothers Aaron that the public has taken it upon itself to determine what would have been appropriate for his circumstances. "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," Rolling Stone U.K. in 2024.

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Most couples tend to spend some time apart engaging in activities that don't involve the other, like hanging out with friends or perhaps exercising in peace. But that's not Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Sam Taylor-Johnson's relationship dynamics. Instead, they prefer to stay attached at the hip at all times. "In the 10 years we've been together, we've only been apart for maybe two or three days," they said in their joint Harper's Bazaar conversation. "And those were the worst days of those 10 years."

The Taylor-Johnsons don't even like to measure their time apart in terms of days — that would be too much. "If you saw us together, we're in such sync. We spend every minute of the day together," Sam told The Sunday Times in 2017. However, their busy careers required that they break their rule in late 2022, when Aaron jetted off to Australia for six weeks to shoot "The Fall Guy" while Sam stayed behind to work on the Amy Winehouse biopic "Back to Black."

They both hated the experience. "We drafted in his parents to help with the kids and we all went, 'Bye!'" Sam said in The Guardian interview. "But that was tough and neither of us enjoyed it." They vowed to never undertake projects at the same time. "It'll be back to one on, one off now," she said. That way, they can continue to spend every second together, even if that means taking the whole family to film sets. 

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When Aaron Taylor-Johnson married Sam Taylor-Johnson, he became the stepfather to his wife's two daughters from her marriage to the influential British gallerist Jay Jopling. Sam and Jopling welcomed Angelica in April 1997, which means she was born when Aaron was just 6 (though he turned 7 two months later). The former couple also share a second daughter, Jessie, born in 2005 (both are seen above). Aaron is still closer in age to Sam's youngest daughter than he is to her.

Even though he isn't much older than his stepdaughters, Aaron has a fatherly relationship with them. In October 2024, he showed his affection for Jessie on his Instagram Stories (via People). "Happy birthday BabyGirl," he wrote over a photo of him hugging a much younger Jessie. He included a second, more recent photo of them together with the words: "18 now...still my babygirl." When he married his wife, Aaron jumped into fatherhood right in the lovely teenage years, as Angelica was 15 at the time.

Then Jessie entered adolescence a few years later, and soon enough Aaron's own daughters joined the family. He was seemingly never not raising teens, even though he was in his 20s and 30s. "Teenagers, man," he told Esquire in 2023. "I've got teenagers." But he wouldn't have it any other way. Aaron always wanted a big family. "I knew I was going to be a young father. I knew I was going to have many kids," he said.

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When casting for "Nowhere Boy" began in August 2008, Sam Taylor-Johnson was still married to Jay Jopling. The two announced their separation shortly after. "Jay Jopling and Sam Taylor-Wood are saddened to announce that, after 11 years of marriage, they have agreed amicably to separate," their rep told the Daily Mail in September 2008. The couple wanted to emphasize that their split had nothing to do with anyone else getting in between them. "No other parties are involved," they said.

But when Aaron Taylor-Johnson fell for Sam, she was still married. "I knew instantly with Sam that I'd found my soulmate," he said in The Telegraph interview of the moment he met her. "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." But since Sam and Aaron didn't start dating until the following year, it's safe to assume no cheating came in the way.

Jopling, for his part, went on to remarry in circumstances similar to those of his ex-wife. In June 2015, he became engaged to American curator Hikari Yokoyama, who is two decades his junior. In December 2019, 22 years after becoming a father for the first time, he welcomed a daughter, Djuna Mei, with Yokoyama. Despite their age difference, Jopling's new relationship didn't undergo the same level of scrutiny as Sam and Aaron's.