Aaron Taylor-Johnson Reacts to Criticism About His Marriage
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Originally appeared on E! Online
Aaron Taylor-Johnson thinks his life is kick-ass.
Even if it happened on an accelerated timeline. In fact, for those who might scrutinize parts of his journey—including the decision to marry Sam Taylor-Johnson, 24 years his senior, at the age of 22—he'd like to remind them he began his professional career at the age of six.
"What you gotta realize," he told Rolling Stone UK in an interview published March 20, "is that what most people were doing in their twenties, I was doing when I was 13."
Aaron continued, "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."
The Bullet Train star, 33, met Sam, 57, on the set of 2009's Nowhere Boy, the John Lennon biopic she directed starring Aaron, who was 18 at the time. The couple—who are parents to daughters Wylda, 13, and Romy Hero, 11, as well as Angelica, 25, and Jessie, 15, from Sam's first marriage—have collaborated a number of times since, including the 2018 adaptation of A Million Little Pieces.
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But while he knows his wife is "a great filmmaker and a wonderful storyteller," he admitted it can be hard to shake off criticisms of their relationship.
"There's a protectiveness that I feel," he shared. "I think it's really difficult. There's also part of me that feels like if something didn't work, I'm the one that's responsible."
In reality, it's the mundanity that takes front seat in Aaron's own life. "People see and perceive this thing around my career, and that's OK," he explained. "But I'm just trying to juggle my family and my work. I'm doing normal life; dentist appointments. Career doesn't necessarily take a back seat, but it takes a different thought behind the choices that you make."
The Marvel actor—who has recently been at the center of rumors he'll be the next James Bond—doesn't often speak to his relationship, and when he does he keeps information to a minimum.
"I'm trying to be as honest as possible," he told Esquire last year. "I've probably talked to you more about my kids and Sam than I have with anybody. I've got really nothing to hide, and I'm secure in what we have. But I'm not going to unlock things that are actually precious to me."
For more couples who met on set, keep reading.
Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes
No stranger to dating co-stars after romances with Sandra Bullock and Rachel McAdams, Gosling fell for Mendes on the set of The Place Beyond the Pines. But the pair have managed to keep their relationship private since they began dating in 2013.
The couple have since welcomed two daughters, Esmeralda, 8, and Amada, 6, and Mendes opened up about how ending up with The Notebook star changed her opinion on motherhood.
"I was lucky enough to work my bum off for 20 years," the New York & Company designer said on Sydney's Nova 96.9 in October 2020. "I never wanted babies before until I fell in love with Ryan, and then it just kind of worked out to where I was 40 and having my first baby and then I think I was 42 with my second one, so it worked out in that way that I had a career and then I changed my focus to my family."
And she's not ruling out a future on-screen collaboration with Gosling.
"I really want to work with Ryan again. My most fun experience was being on set with him when he was directing," she told E! News. "It was really so creatively satisfying being in it together and he's such an amazing director. I would love that experience again, for sure."
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton
The singers, who met on the set of The Voice, have been nearly inseparable ever since they first started dating back in November 2015.
While Shelton and Stefani both admitted that they had initially bonded over the ending of their respective marriages, it seems as though their love affair had lasting power from the get-go.
In an interview with Billboard, Shelton recalled falling head over heels for the singer and how the two ultimately helped each other through their heartache. "Gwen saved my life," he said. "Who else on earth could understand going through a high-profile divorce from another musician?"
After five years of dating, Shelton popped the question in October 2020 and the couple got married in an intimate ceremony in July 2021.
According to Carson Daly, who officiated their wedding, the nuptials were "a perfect blend of country and glamour."
"It was as elegant and refined and cool as Gwen is, and it was country and down-home and fun as Blake is," he told Today, adding, "They just work. They're an unlikely pair. They're like if you paired delicious fried chicken with a glass of champagne. On paper, on the menu, it doesn't seem to work, but it works. They're comfort food with class, and everybody roots for that."
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos
The beloved couple first met in 1995 when they played love interests on the popular soap opera All My Children. The morning talk show personality and the Riverdale star then eloped to Las Vegas on May 1, 1996.
Consuelos knew "pretty early on" Ripa was the one for him, once telling Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, "We would go out with groups of people from work and slowly each date would go that the groups started getting smaller and smaller until it was just us two. I was shy, I wasn't very aggressive that way."
But Ripa revealed the couple almost split before their wedding.
"We broke up and we got back together the day before we went off and eloped," she detailed on the Comments By Celebs podcast in 2018. "Yeah, we eloped. We went to Vegas and got married."
More than 27 years and three children later, their marriage is still going strong. And, in a full-circle moment, Ripa and Consuelos are sharing the screen together, with Consuelos officially replacing Ryan Seacrest as her permanent Live co-host this past April.
Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly
From the moment the Jennifer's Body star met the rapper on their shared movie set in 2020, she knew their relationship was destined to become what she called a "once in a lifetime" romance.
Chatting with their Midnight in the Switchgrass director Randall Emmett on his and his then-fiancée Lala Kent's podcast in July 2020, Fox recalled inquiring who was going to fill the empty chair on set. "And [Emmett] was like, 'Oh, we just got Machine Gun Kelly,'" she said, "and immediately, I was like, 'Uh oh.' Because I knew, I could feel that some wild s--t was going to happen to me from that meeting but I wasn't sure what. I just felt it in my solar plexus that something was going to come from that."
Fox, who quietly separated from husband of nine years Brian Austin Green in late 2019, went on to call MGK her "twin flame," explaining they are more than soul mates.
And they haven't been shy about showing their love for one another: Fox starred in Kelly's music video, they got tattoos to mark their romance and made their red carpet debut as a couple before getting engaged in January 2022.
While breakup rumors surfaced in February after Fox addressed allegations of Kelly's infidelity in a since-deleted Instagram post, the couple is still together.
Kit Harington and Rose Leslie
Just as his character Jon Snow couldn't resist falling for Ygritte, Harington fell in love with his Game of Thrones co-star after she joined the HBO fantasy series in its second season. In an interview with Vogue Italia, he recalled shooting those episodes as his favorite memory from the show.
"Because the country is beautiful, because the Northern Lights are magical, and because it was there that I fell in love," he said. "If you're already attracted to someone, and then they play your love interest in the show, it becomes very easy to fall in love."
While their onscreen romance proved ill-fated, Harington and Leslie got married in June 2018 and have since welcomed two children whose names have not been made public.
Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song
The Home Alone actor and the former Disney Channel star met making 2019's Changeland and their romance surprised their director Seth Green, who told Esquire, "I didn't see that one coming."
Song explained to Entertainment Tonight that they bonded over their shared backgrounds as child actors. "You just look each other in the eye and you nod and we know," she said.
Engaged since 2022, the couple have two children: Two-year-old son Dakota Song Culkin and a second son who was born last March and whose name has not yet been revealed.
Sarah Shahi and Adam Demos
The couple met on the set of Netflix's Sex/Life, in which they play angsty former couple Billie and Brad, so it's no wonder those intimate scenes are so steamy: Shahi and Demos went public with their romance in December 2020, with fans loving their adorable displays of affection on social media.
And mixing business and pleasure has been easy for the couple, with Shahi telling E! News that working with her boyfriend is "one of her favorite things." As she put it, Adam is one of her "all-time favorite scene partners."
"With him, it's just that easy," she explained. "I just have to look at him and 99 percent of my work is done for me. I'm falling in love with the person in real life, but I'm falling for the person on camera. It just created that extra bit that seeped through the lens. Maybe that's what people loved so much."
Emily VanCamp and Josh Bowman
While their characters' love story didn't have a happy ending on ABC's Revenge, VanCamp and Bowman tied the knot on Dec. 15, 2018, and have been together for more than a decade.
In August 2021, the couple announced the birth of their first child together. "Welcome to the world our sweet little Iris," VanCamp wrote on Instagram, revealing their baby girl's name. "Our hearts are full."
In February 2024, Emily announced on Instagram that she is pregnant with the couple's second child.
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick
The two met on the set of the 1988 PBS movie Lemon Sky and married later that year and are considered one of Hollywood's strongest relationships after more than 35 years together. The couple are parents to two children—son Travis Bacon, 34, a composer, and daughter Sosie Bacon, 31, who is also an actress.
Jared Padalecki and Genevieve Cortese
And the hunter fell for the irresistible demon—both on and off screen.
Padalecki and Cortese hit it off when she joined Supernatural in its fourth season as Ruby. And after a two-month engagement, they tied the knot in her hometown of Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2010, with his TV bro Jensen Ackles serving as one of the groomsmen.
The couple, who once again co-starred on the CW's Walker with Cortese playing his character's dead wife in flashbacks, have have three children, sons Thomas, 11, Austin, 9, and daughter Odette, 6.
Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin
It was a fairy tale romance for Dallas and Goodwin when they co-starred on ABC's fantasy hit Once Upon a Time, playing Prince Charming and Snow White, of course.
"It hit me like a blinding light," Dallas told People in 2012. "I thought, 'I'm in trouble now.'"
As for Goodwin, she knew Dallas was the one when they went on their first date to Disneyland.
"I knew that in fact I was going to marry my husband Josh at Disneyland because I took him for his first time ever and we had just started dating," Goodwin would later detail to Kelly Ripa. "We were on Big Thunder Mountain and he threw his arms in the air and he goes, 'This is the best day of my life' and I was like, 'We're totally getting married.'"
He popped the question in October 2013 and they tied the knot in April 2014. Dallas and Goodwin are the parents of sons Oliver, 9, and Hugo, 6, and the Manifest star is hoping to work with his wife again after their six-year stint on OUAT.
"She's the greatest. I miss working with her every day," he said on Live with Kelly and Ryan. "I think she was like, 'look, we've worked together and we've lived together six years, give me a break.' But I think we'll work together again, I hope so."
Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys
It wasn't exactly love at first sight for The Americans co-stars when they met 10 years before working together on the acclaimed FX spy drama.
"We actually met a very long long time ago," he confessed on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. "I very drunkenly asked her for her number when she was a young, single, slip of a thing, so I sort of knew then when I was 26."
But a decade and plenty of wigs later, Rhys and Russell quietly began dating in 2014 while playing married KGB spies. They welcomed their first child together, son Sam, in May 2016. Russell also has two children from her previous marriage, son River Deary and daughter Willa Deary.
Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn
While they recently teamed up to play Santa and Mrs. Claus for Netflix's The Christmas Chronicles, the beloved Hollywood pair first met on the set of 1968's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.
But they didn't fall for each other until reconnecting while filming 1984's Swing Shift, despite Hawn telling BBC News, "We both said we would never go out with another actor." The couple went on to star in the 1988 rom-com Overboard.
Partners for 40 years, Russell and Hawn share son Wyatt Russell in addition to each having children from prior relationships, Oliver and Kate Hudson and Boston Russell.
Asked their secret for working well with each other, Russell quipped to E! News, "Do it every 33 years, first of all!"
Wyatt Russell and Meredith Hagner
Talk about following in your parents' footsteps.
Wyatt, the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, fell for Hagner after they met while working on the 2016 movie Folk Hero & Funny Guy. Later, the two would go on to appear together in Ingrid Goes West.
After getting engaged in 2018, the couple wed the following year at Goldie's house in Aspen. "It was Western themed and everyone came in cowboy hats and boots," a source shared with E! News at the time. "It was a big casual gathering of family and friends that lasted all weekend."
Russell and Hanger welcomed their son Buddy Prine Russell in November 2021.
Kate Mara and Jamie Bell
Well, at least one good thing came out of the universally panned Fantastic Four reboot in 2014.
Mara and Bell fell for each other on the set of the superhero flick, though they didn't spark dating rumors until they were spotted holding hands at a Met Gala after-party in May 2015.
After their July 2017 wedding, Bell gushed to E! News, "It feels like we've been married for years. In the best way. We're having a great time."
In May 2019, Mara revealed the couple welcomed their first child. "We had a baby a couple weeks ago..." the A Teacher star wrote on Instagram. "Here are her feet." In November 2022, Mara and Bell announced the birth of their second child in similar fashion: "Had a baby a week ago," Mara shared on Instagram. "Here are his feet." Bell also shares son Jack Bell with ex-wife Evan Rachel Wood.
Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara
Kate isn't the only Mara sister to find love on a film set.
In 2013, Phoenix and Mara proved their enviable chemistry when they co-starred in the Oscar-nominated film Her. They then shared the screen in the 2018 biblical drama Mary Magdalene, and according to reports, the couple first realized their attraction to one another while filming the project a year prior in Italy.
The private pair made their red carpet debut at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and quietly got engaged in 2019. And, while accepting the Oscar for Best Actor, The Joker star got emotional while giving Mara a shout-out. Wiping away tears, he told his partner, "I love you."
In September 2020, director Victor Kossakovsky revealed at the Zurich Film Festival that the couple had welcomed a baby boy. He also confirmed that the couple's son was named River, seemingly in honor of Joaquin's late brother River Phoenix, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 23.
Ryan Bingham and Hassie Harrison
Yellowstone fans were twirling their lassos with glee when the co-stars confirmed their relationship with a fiery photo posted to Bingham's Instagram in April 2022. In the post, the two were seen sharing a kiss in front of an open flame, with the actor captioning their PDA post, "More than a spark." As for Harrison's reaction? She commented, "I love you, cowboy."
Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer
It was love at first bite for the couple, who began dating while filming the first season of HBO's True Blood in 2008.
"There's no one I'd rather work with," Moyer told E! News in 2009. "I love working with her and that's how it all started, by falling in love on camera."
They announced their engagement a year later and tied the knot in August 2010. Moyer and Paquin welcomed twins, Poppy and Charlie, in 2012.
Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen
Each having a failed marriage behind them, neither star was looking for love when they arrived on the set of Pontiac Moon in 1993.
"I announced to all my friends—not dramatically, but very seriously—that I was done with relationships," Steenburgen told Closer. But the pair fell for each other while playing husband and wife, with Danson revealing they bonded during a scene in a canoe.
"We paddled in sync," Danson said. "We went out as friends and by the time we came back, we were in love... Ironic how life works in those moments. Once you throw up your arms and surrender, a lot of times things come your way."
In October 2020, the couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, with the Book Club actress gushing to Closer, "I'm ridiculously in love with him. I find him endlessly fascinating. He surprises me all the time and most of all he makes me laugh."
The Good Place actor admitted in the same interview, "I get nervous around her because I want to impress her—I am the luckiest."
Grace Van Patten and Jackson White
After viewers binged the Hulu drama Tell Me Lies, they couldn't help but wonder if Van Patten and White's onscreen chemistry had trickled over into real-life, with the pair fully playing into their are-they-or-aren't-they dynamic in interviews and on social media. And in November of last year, we finally got the answer: No, we're not fibbing, the problematic onscreen pair is together in real-life and, fortunately, toxin-free.
White confirmed their romance with several photobooth snaps from the 2022 CFDA Awards, including a picture of the co-star couple kissing. He then posted a photo of himself and Van Patten touching tongues with the caption, "if we kiss can we get a s2 @hulu." Spoiler alert: It worked! Tell Me Lies is set to return later this year.
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