-
- 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)