Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Known worldwide as Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and as Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (birthname: Aaron Perry Johnson) is a busy actor immersed in many of the most commercially successful movie vehicles, including the mega-blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), which earned over $1.4 billion; the mini-franchise Kick-Ass (2010), along with the sequel, Kick-Ass 2 (2013), with Chloë Grace Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse; and Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014), with Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, and Bryan Cranston.

From his feature debut performance in Tom & Thomas (2002) until Oliver Stone’s version of Don Winslow’s crime novel, Savages (2012), Aaron Taylor-Johnson was credited as Aaron Johnson. Beginning with Joe Wright’s and Tom Stoppard’s Tolstoy adaptation, Anna Karenina (2012), with Keira Knightley and Jude Law, he has been credited on screen as Aaron Taylor-Johnson, after having married director and photographer artist Sam Taylor-Wood (in 2012), who directed him as John Lennon in her debut 2009 feature, Nowhere Boy, with Kristin Scott Thomas, and then as the scandal-ridden author James Frey in the critically lambasted A Million Little Pieces (2018), which Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson co-wrote, adapting Frey’s same-titled and later denounced the book.

Taylor-Johnson’s first significant feature, at age 16, was Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (2006), with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. Soon after playing Lennon in Nowhere Boy, Taylor-Johnson was cast to topline Kick-Ass (2010), marking his career breakthrough. In a rapid succession of major roles, Aaron Taylor-Johnson played opposite Glenn Close in Rodrigo Garcia’s acclaimed drama Albert Nobbs (2011); opposite Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively in the Oliver Stone/Don Winslow thriller, Savages (2012); and in a co-lead role in Wright’s Anna Karenina; the sequel to Kick-Ass in 2013.

Taylor-Johnson then appeared in a run of big-budgeted and high-profile projects, including as Quicksilver in the MCU blockbusters Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron; in 2014’s Godzilla; as a co-star (which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe award) in Tom Ford’s second directorial feature, Nocturnal Creatures (2016), with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal; opposite John Cena in Doug Liman’s war drama, The Wall (2017); and with Chris Pine in David Mackenzie’s 14th century Scottish drama for Netflix, Outlaw King (2018).

Taylor-Johnson was cast by director Christopher Nolan alongside John David Washington and Robert Pattinson in the high-tech Tenet (2020), followed by casting by director Matthew Vaughn in the Kingsman sequel, The King’s Man (2021), with Ralph Fiennes and Djimon Hounsou; and joining the starry cast of David Leitch’s action-comedy, Bullet Train (2022), with Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock.

In his most significant role to date, Taylor-Johnson is starring Sergei Kravinoff/Kraven the Hunter in the MCU project and the fourth film in the Spider-Man Universe, Kraven the Hunter (2023). Wife Sam Taylor-Johnson will again direct him in Rothko (date to be announced), a drama about the legacy of the great, late American artist, with Russell Crowe set to play Rothko, along with cast members Michael Stuhlbarg, Jared Harris, and Aisling Franciosi.