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- 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)

We sat down with 'Kick-Ass' star Aaron Taylor-Johnson and asked him to explain a few things—from what it was like working with Brad Pitt on Bullet Train to how he got shredded for his Esquire cover shoot. Plus, Aaron talks playing Kraven in the new 'Kraven The Hunter.' 

This interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson Is Obsessed With Brad Pitt's Cashmere Jumpers

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