Aaron Taylor-Johnson had a profound connection to wife Sam Taylor-Johnson before he'd even met her.
While the two struck up a romance after meeting on the set of 2009's Nowhere Boy and married in 2012, it turns out that Sam's visual art "Still Life 2001" had had a huge effect on Aaron when he was younger.
"I had went to the Tate Modern with my parents and my sister," the 34-year-old recalled to Chef Josh Scherer on an episode of Mythical Kitchen’s YouTube series Last Meals premiering Dec. 5. "I could not tell you what else was on show that day."
But he found himself drawn to one piece in particular.
"I remember walking through the doors and on the wall was this amazing, this beautiful frame of a fruit bowl and a biro," he explained, "just sitting here right next to the basket of fruit."
And while the piece was framed like a photo, the image slowly began to decay over the course of a few minutes, with Aaron noting the "fruit starts to mold and decay and become furry and mold into different versions and then into nothing."
"I stood in front of that piece for the entire time," he said, "whilst my parents walked on to the next room, to the next room, to the next room and then came back round."
The Kraven the Hunter star was finally able to pull himself away when his parents told him it was time to go, but the image remained with him.
"I just stood and stood in front of this piece of work and it just blew my mind," he gushed. "I couldn't even tell you why or how, but it was like nothing I've ever seen before. And I couldn't even tell you who the artist was at the time. Only then to find out it was the woman I married years later."
But Aaron only realized that Sam, 57, was the artist when she described the piece to him after they started dating—with one part of the image in particular sticking in his memory: the biro (which is British slang for a ballpoint pen.)
"'The thing with the biro?'" he told her. "And she was like, 'Oh my god, no one ever remembers the fact that it was a biro by the thing.'"
As he noted, it was "one of those slightly profound moments that happen to me" where he was already so connected to "the woman I fell in love with."
Over the years Aaron and Sam—who share daughters Wylda, 13, and Romy, 12, as well as stepdaughters Angelica, 27, and Jessie, 18, from Sam's previous marriage to Jay Jopling—have not been shy about putting their romance on display, despite the conversations that pop up around their age gap. But as Aaron explained, he was very quickly certain that he'd found his person in life.
"I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person," Aaron said to The Telegraph in 2019. "I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child."
For a look back at the couple's love story, keep reading.
May 2009
Love at first read? “I wasn’t expecting anything that day," Sam Taylor-Johnson told Harper's Bazaar of future husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson's 2008 audition for her directorial debut Nowhere Boy. "Just to see a bunch of actors pretending to be John Lennon.”
The 18-year-old impressed in more ways than one—nabbing the role and eventually the director's heart. "I knew instantly," she later told The Telegraph of him nailing the read. "I could see how much research he'd done already just by the way he was standing and the few words he said."
October 2009
Though she would later tell Harper's Bazaar they "were very professional through the entire film," after they wrapped, she continued, "He told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed.”
Precisely one year after they met, he shared, "I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.” The pair announced their engagement at their film's London premiere.
June 2010
By the time he was 11, Aaron recounted to Esquire, he was already planning for a big family. So not only was he ready to embrace the role of stepdad to Angelica and Jessie, Sam's daughters with ex-husband Jay Joplin, but he was eager to add a few of their own.
"I knew I was going to be a young father," he explained. "I knew I was going to have many kids.” The couple welcomed daughter Wylda in July 2010.
December 2011
Receiving an OBE recognizing her artwork and photography from the future King Charles III at Buckinham Palace, Sam brought along Aaron and her eldest daughters.
December 2011
A year and a half after Wylda's birth, daughter Romy joined the team in January 2012. "The great thing about Aaron is that he's happy not working and being at home with the kids while I work," the director told The Guardian in 2015. "We're actually fighting over it. He's like, 'No no, I like being an at-home dad, doing the cooking and the school runs.'"
October 2012
Months after their June wedding in Somerset, England, the couple (at the London premiere of Skyfall) revealed they'd decided to combine their last names into one.
"I just don't see why women need to take the man's name," Aaron explained to the London Evening Standard. "I wanted to be a part of her just as much as she wanted to be part of me."
October 2015
Mrs. Taylor-Johnson will see you now. While promoting Fifty Shades of Grey, the director raved about her years-long romance.
"Being in an amazing relationship, having come out of a difficult one, it felt so good," she noted to The Guardian. "And I feel like that stability has enabled me to get on with doing this momentous project."
But, no, she never once considered casting her man as Christian Grey. "We both read it and knew right then that when she went into direct it, I wouldn't be the one to step into those shoes," he told Marie Claire U.K. "And that was fine. It didn't feel like one of us was like, "I really wanted to do that'...I'm obviously really, really proud of Sam and it was great to see her take that project and make it her own, and not have to feel like just because there's a role...I feel like I'm too young for that role anyway!"
January 2017
When the actor won his first Golden Globe, as the star of Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, he shouted out all of his girls.
"I want to thank my wife for being there with me, supporting me through this," he said. "Thank you for putting up with me. Jesus, that was not very pleasant in this role, so you're my soulmate and I love you very much."
"I'm blessed," he continued. "I have four beautiful daughters: Angelica, Phoenix, Wylda, and Romy, I love you all very much."
September 2018
Before teaming up for A Million Little Pieces, the duo teased their future plans. "We are definitely working towards something interesting," Aaron told E! News at the 2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. "Hopefully we can get it off the ground. I mean, this is the best director right here I'm desperate to work with again."
June 2022
Forgoing the traditional tin, the pair celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary with a vow renewal. "Yesterday was the most beautiful day, summer solstice, our 10th anniversary," Aaron wrote, sharing the photos on Instagram. "We renewed our vows to one another and confessed our love in front of our nearest and dearest friends and family it was a celebration of love and joy!"
Echoed his bride, "10 glorious years. My incredible husband, father to all 4 girls. I love you, I love you, I love you."
April 2024
While the stars (at the London premiere of Back to Black) are aware others want to address their age gap, "When you're solid with someone in your own love," she told The Sunday Times, "you don't think about it."