- Can you handle horror films?
No.
No, I don't watch horror movies.
I couldn't even tell you one,
but it was great working with Robert Eggers.
That film is gonna scare the (beep) out of you.
It will scare the living (beep) out of you.
Hey, it's Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
I'm here with "Esquire"
in this insane castle in the middle of an island,
and "Esquire" has asked me to explain some things.
So I'll try and do my best to explain some things. (laughs)
(upbeat music)
Who can walk on their hands longer, you or Sam?
I can, me.
To give Sam her credit,
Sam's actually upside down more
than I'm upside down actually.
In the mornings, I'll be dancing round the kitchen
for the most part.
We have quite a bit of a morning dance off most mornings.
Sam's most likely upside down
up against a wall somewhere on her head.
You have a good jump.
Explain the vertical skill.
I don't know, it comes from a sort of
like a dance background, I guess, you know?
There's a lot of speculation
on whether there's a trampoline or not, but there's not.
There was a reason why.
I'll tell you what, it's funny.
I was in Prague.
I thought I'd do a sort of series of jumps,
and I did my first one,
and I jumped really high, but nobody knows
that when I landed, I literally tweaked my knee.
I tweaked my knee, and I was like hobbling around.
I couldn't jump.
And I was like, damn, I have like five more jumps
I wanted to do, but everyone was like,
"I don't believe you jumped there.
"That's Photoshop."
And I'm like, "It's not."
How did it feel the first time
you saw yourself in this campaign?
Truth be told, I have four daughters,
all of which just rips dad to pieces.
So, (laughs) my youngest daughter said,
"Dad, you look like a posh dancer
"who thinks they are like amazing, but really they're not."
You're never gonna be cool when you're just dad.
You are in peak performance shape.
What's your training regime look like?
I'm actually really fortunate
I found out an incredible trainer, David Kingsbury,
who trained Hugh Jackman for "Wolverine."
He trained me for this.
I'd never been in such crazy shape.
It was extreme.
There was so much discipline behind it.
You don't drink alcohol.
You eat clean.
You know, you're on such a different sort of regime
that it's such a reset, and it was great.
And then I try and sort of stay
in that kind of somewhere in there.
What was the most surprising thing you learned working
with Brad Pitt on "Bullet Train?" (laughs)
It's a very funny photo of us.
We had all sorts of ways of doing hearts.
Do you what was interesting on that tour,
he had these beautiful cashmere shirts,
God's Own Cashmere, which I found out
that pretty much everybody had,
but I didn't find that gift in my hotel,
but Joey King, she had a beautiful cashmere shirt.
Good thing.
What do you love most about farm life?
That's everything to me actually.
There's nothing better than being kind of like back at home
and out in the countryside.
Kind of keeping busy outside of work,
it's nice to have like a hobby, to be creative,
to be kind of immersed in something.
It started with like really enjoying cooking for the family,
and then it was like, well, actually I wanna learn more
about where those ingredients come from.
And then it's like, well, you know,
the fresher, the better and more organic.
And then it was like, well, then I started gardening,
and then it was a vegetable garden,
and you start to get more involved with that.
And then it just got further and further out.
And now I have pigs.
I'm looking at getting a couple cows.
You know, it's just stuff like that,
but it kind of keeps you busy,
and it's kind of like it's just a sort of a thing
that's for you, you know?
Tom Ford personally shaved Aaron Taylor-Johnson's
Golden Globe winning mutton chops.
Tom is so particular.
He's got such an eye for detail,
and he knows exactly what he wants,
and that's kind of the beauty of Tom
is that like there's structure and form,
and I think he just wanted to kind of craft the look.
And I was so open to him just doing that
because I like playing characters,
and I like when you when you jump onto something,
and you get to start to shed yourself and then just start
to sort of put together these other characters.
It doesn't really matter how you kind of find it.
Like you can start from the physical aspect
all the way through to like the psychological aspects
of your character, but they sort of kind of merge
at the same time.
How do you get into the mindset of a psychopath?
Like anything, you're doing your research, aren't you?
And then you're just absorbing and soaking up,
and you're being a sponge for all of that.
And then you want to, you know, adopt some of those nuances
and these bad habits and things like that
and then sort of bring them out and play with them on set.
So yeah, it was just a very toxic mindset you gotta be in.
If you had to have dinner with one of your characters,
who would you choose and why?
So I got "Kraven the Hunter" here.
I got Lieutenant Ford from "Godzilla."
Isaac, "The Wall," no.
Ray Marcus, absolutely not.
Friedrich Harding from "Nosferatu," I just played,
he'd be quite a laugh for dinner actually.
He'd be quite a laugh for dinner.
What's the most surprising thing you learned
about John Lennon while playing him in "Nowhere Boy?"
What was kind of interesting about that story
was the impact of what rock and roll
and what Elvis sort of inhabited like this effect on women.
And I think in this story, we was kind of playing
with the themes of these maternal figures around him.
He was living with his aunt Mimi,
but he sort of discovered his mother a bit late,
but she was into rock and roll, and then he saw Elvis,
and he saw this effect that he had on women.
It was like, okay, I want that attention,
but not from everybody else.
All he wanted was the attention
from, you know, that one person, his mother.
What's a cheat day look like for you?
Lots of pizza, man.
Pizza and pasta.
On the day of wrap of "Kraven,"
I had a pizza truck turn up,
and we all just munched on pizza.
That's good.
The character Kraven is one
of Spider-Man's notorious villains.
He's quite a big dude.
I remember looking at the comic books
and thinking his arm's really, really big,
but also, you know, it's his stomach as well,
which is a bit of a contradiction really,
because if you want to put on some size,
you've gotta eat a lot, but you're not really gonna end up
with a washboard stomach.
So that was quite tricky,
but I did train really hard,
spent, you know a good six months training really hard
to put on size, so I had that kind of physicality
for this character.
Also, the action side of things is really agile,
so, you know, I really wanted to show his movement.
His technical sort of skillset is that he tracks
and hunts down his prey.
So, you know, that's really important.
What seems really interesting, I mean,
it is something that inherently is a part
of the character and the introduction to Kraven
in this movie.
So, I think it's really interesting how Kraven's connection
to his iconic lion vest is in the comic books.
So I think we wanna stay true and integral
to the comic books, and, you know, it's really important
to give the comic book fans what they've seen
and grown up with and try and translate that to cinema.
So, that took some really a lot of time
and thought into how we would get to that place.
Oh, that was it.
Thanks for watching.
All right, cheers. (laughs)