NANCY MILLS
NYT SYNDICATE
THOUSANDS of young people around the world first encounter Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina in high school. Not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the 22- year-old British actor who plays Count Vronsky in the new film version.
“God, no, not at my school,” Taylor- Johnson says. “I’m not from that background or that world. I have no further education.
Obviously I knew of Tolstoy, but I had never really tackled anything that big before.
“Once I attacked it, it wasn’t as hard as it seemed.” Taylor-Johnson may not have be booksmart, but when he takes up an acting challenge he is relentless. To play the teenage John Lennon in Nowhere Boy (2009), he spent three months studying the Beatle and learning to play the banjo and the guitar. He had no trouble transforming himself into a California pothead-drug dealer in Oliver Stone’s Savages (2012), obliterating any trace of his middle-class British accent. He played an American high-school nerd turned superhero in Kick-Ass (2010) and is currently filming Kick-Ass 2
Speaking by cell telephone while being driven from the set to his home in Somerset, England, Taylor-Johnson talks about playing Vronsky, a wealthy young cavalry officer who falls in love with the title character (Keira Knightley), an older married woman.
When Anna gets pregnant with his child, she leaves her husband (Jude Law), a government official, and flaunts her new relationship – but Russian society won’t accept her.
Tom Stoppard adapted the novel for the film, which will open on November 16. The director is Joe Wright, who also made Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Atonement (2007), both starring Knightley.
“Anna Karenina is almost like a soap,” Taylor-Johnson says. “It’s a huge story with a fantastic character that you admire, love and hate at the same time. I don’t see it as an intellectual, educational movie. It’s a magical, enchanting spectacle, very theatrical, expressive, wild and different.” Instead of going for Merchant-Ivory realism, Wright and Stoppard have set the story on a stage and incorporated a certain amount of deliberate artificiality.
“It’s more of a dreamlike imagination world,” Taylor-Johnson says. “No one really knows how people were in the (late 19th century), so we could invent this and that.
He’s in white, she’s in black. There are all kinds of visuals. You don’t have to do much thinking.” The world of Czarist Russia is long gone, of course, but the young actor sees modern parallels to the story.
“Of course it could happen today,” he says.
“It shows the love that people wish they could have. Some never have it. Others do and it doesn’t make them happy.” Taylor-Johnson’s own life is not so far removed from the romantic elements of Anna Karenina, although so far his story has a happier ending.
While making Nowhere Boy three years ago, he fell in love with director Sam Taylor- Wood, who at the time was 42 to his 19.
After having two daughters together – 2- year-old Wylda and 10-month-old Romy – they married this past June. She changed her name to Sam Taylor-Johnson, while he went from Aaron Johnson to Aaron Taylor- Johnson.
The romance made headlines in England, mostly because of their age difference, but Taylor-Johnson dismisses the hoopla.
“When you’re ready, you’re ready,” he says. “I fell in love and I wanted a family. I wanted babies. I’ve got two beautiful girls.
We’re very happy. I need them in my life.
“I actually now have a life,” Taylor- Johnson says. “I have something worth waking up for. They’re my grounding.” That Taylor-Johnson has taken so readily to domesticity is something of a surprise.
The young Aaron Johnson, son of an engineer, led an existence that was anything but settled.
“I did lots of stuff outside school – gymnastics, karate, singing, acting and dance,” he says, recalling his childhood in High Wycombe, a large town about 30 miles from London. “One took off more than the others. I started doing bits and bobs in the theatre and the West End. I started slowly, but I was open to everything and I enjoyed it.” He was 6 when he appeared in his first commercial, and 9 when he played the son of Macduff (Rufus Sewell) in a 1999 London production of Macbeth. At 10 he made his first film, Tom & Thomas (2002).
“It took six months, and we filmed in Amsterdam,” Taylor-Johnson recalls. “I lived in the red-light district with my mom.
That was quite a laugh.
“I learned how to talk to adults and have opinions,” he continues. “It became my secret life. Then, when filming was over, I’d go back to school and hang out with my mates.” Taylor-Johnson agrees with Joaquin Phoenix’s take on acting.
“He describes it as his ‘extreme sport,”’ the young actor says. “You have to be brave, because you’re throwing yourself into the deep end constantly. It’s scary because you’re vulnerable, but that’s fun. It gives you a boost of adrenalin and endorphins.
“I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations,” Taylor-Johnson says. “When I was growing up, I didn’t find anything else interesting in the regular world. I learned to read by reading scripts.” At 15 he decided to focus full-time on his acting career.
“I left school and went from job to job,” he recalls. “I lived out of a suitcase for a couple of years. I travelled and experimented and experienced everything. I’ve met people who are older than me, but they’re actually younger.” Before Nowhere Boy brought him to Hollywood’s attention, Taylor-Johnson spent a decade working in British television and making only the occasional film. Lately, however, movies have been consuming all of his time.
“I arrived on the Anna Karenina set straight from Savages,” he says. “I still had blood on my face.” Although Taylor-Johnson makes a dashing Vronsky, he doesn’t care to be pegged as a romantic lead.
“The first time it happened to me was with Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008),” he says, referring to a British teen comedy directed by Gurinder Chadha.
“When Kick-Ass came along, I was so grateful that I could play this nerdy fanboy, a kid who can’t get anywhere.” He’s hoping that his dreamboat status will be torpedoed by Kick-Ass 2
“In the sequel my character has overcome some obstacles,” Taylor-Johnson says, trying to not give away plot details.
“Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are back and have a very distinctive dynamic.” Whatever he does next, it almost certainly will be something unlike either Anna Karenina or Kick-Ass.
