Ever since Daniel Craig’s 007 was killed off there’s been a worry that the next James Bond will tick all the fashionable diversity boxes that have doomed many recent films to box office failure. The rumours are, however, that a straight white man (yes, an actual biological male) has been offered the iconic role.
Don’t get too excited, though. As cishet males go, 33 year-old Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a wokester’s dream: a self-declared “feminist” house husband who grows his own kale and took the name of his wife, who is 24 years older than him. How’s that for gender equality, chauvinists?
The role hasn’t been confirmed. According to the Mail, a source has said: “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it. The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back.” But there isn’t a script or a director yet, so this may all just be rumours.
In October, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli talked about “a big, big road ahead, re-inventing [Bond] for the next chapter”, adding: “We haven’t even begun with that.”
So who is Aaron Taylor-Johnson? At the age of 18 he was cast as the lead in the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, where he fell for the film’s director Sam Taylor-Wood, 24 years his senior, whom he later married — now 57 to his 33.
The Mail‘s Alison Boshoff explains:
Unusually the besotted groom opted to take one part of his wife’s names, Taylor, when they married — so they both became Taylor-Johnson.
“I just don’t see why women need to take the man’s name. I wanted to be a part of her as much as she wanted to be part of me,” he said.
In fact, there is no more conspicuously lovey-dovey couple in showbusiness.
When Sam celebrated her 50th birthday in 2017, Aaron had her name tattooed on his chest alongside a hummingbird. She had his name inked on her collarbone in June 2021.
Aaron seems to be happiest as a house-husband:
In the early years, home was a £13 million pile in Primrose Hill, North London. Aaron saw movie success as weedy hero Dave Lizewski in comedy Kick-Ass, but he also gladly spent extended periods as a house-husband, looking after their daughters Wylda Rae, now 13, and Romy Hero, 11, plus the two daughters Sam has from her marriage to [Jay] Jopling — Jessie, now 16, and Angelica, 26.
At one point, the school run was so complex — involving drop-offs at four separate schools — that both Aaron and Sam had to do it.
In 2013, Sam took on the direction of Fifty Shades Of Grey in Canada, and took her family along for the duration. Aaron was happy to be in a supporting role. “He’s like: ‘No no, I like being an at-home dad, doing the cooking’,” Sam said.
He agreed: “I wanted, purely, to be with my babies, I didn’t want to be away from them. I battled with what that would be like.”
The family then spent some time in Los Angeles, while Aaron acted in a couple of Marvel films and won acclaim for his role in Tom Ford’s 2016 drama Nocturnal Animals.
In 2022 they returned to the U.K., putting down roots in a listed rural farmhouse in Somerset.
He has settled into country life, saying earlier this year: “I get the opportunity to fly around the world and meet new people. It’s very glamorous and I work on great projects. But when I’m home in the countryside… that’s my place where I can put my feet in the earth and feel grounded.”
He added: “I have got kale and things like that; I had pumpkins last season. I have chickens, I have two pigs, I’ve got two cows. I very much have sort of a homestead.”
Previously Aaron declared that he is “happy to say I’m a feminist. Being a feminist is just believing in equal rights. Man, woman, gay, straight, black, white – we’re all in it together.”
It’s almost like he’s been preparing his whole life to take on the role of the legendary spy. At least, the version that Hollywood wants to serve up in 2024.
Of course, what will really matter is the quality of the plot and script and the performance of the cast. But if the rumoured pick of the leading man is anything to go by, brace for another wokefest.
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