Aaron Taylor-Johnson: did actor cheat on wife with Joey King, relationship with Sam Taylor-Johnson explained

The love lives of celebrities have always been the subject of public fascination, and likely always will be - and usually when rumours of cheating start to emerge online, the person allegedly doing the cheating feels the full wrath of the internet, like with Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and Try Guys star Ned Fulmer.

For Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Avengers: Age of Ultron) however, claims of his supposed infidelity has been met with much talked about on social media due his controversial relationship with wife Sam Taylor-Johnson.

This is everything you need to know.

Why is his marriage to Sam Taylor-Johnson controversial?

Taylor-Johnson’s relationship with his wife, Sam Taylor-Johnson (née Taylor-Wood), has long been regarded as controversial due to their significant age gap and the circumstances surrounding their getting together.

Taylor-Johnson met his future wife in 2008, when he was 18 and she was 42. It was during the casting process for Nowhere Boy, a John Lennon biopic which was Sam Taylor-Johnson’s feature film directorial debut. For a while there was a rumour going around that Sam Taylor-Johnson had known the actor when he was much younger because she was supposedly a family friend, however this claim appears to have been debunked.

Taylor-Johnson auditioned for the role at Sam Taylor-Johnson’s house, and both parties have claimed that they kept their relationship professional throughout the shooting of the film. After the film wrapped, Taylor-Johnson popped the question.

Sam Taylor-Johnson told Harper’s Bazaar: “As soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed.”

Taylor-Johnson added: “A year to the minute after we met, exactly one year to the minute, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.”

The two announced their engagement at the premier for Nowhere Boy in October 2009, and they tied the knot at Babington House in Somerset on 21 June 2012, with both taking the last name Taylor-Johnson.

“I just don’t see why women need to take the man’s name,” Taylor-Johnson told the Evening Standard about their name change. “I wanted to be a part of her just as much as she wanted to be a part of me.”

Speaking to the Telegraph in 2019, Taylor-Johnson said: “I knew instantly with Sam that I’d found my soulmate. I knew instantly that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person. I remember it very well, and a year to the day [after] I met her I proposed. I knew I wanted a family with her, I knew I wanted kids, and a month later she was pregnant with our first child.”

Regarding their age gap, Taylor-Johnson said that he “never for a second felt a difference in age”, adding that “Sam is far more outgoing and energetic and achieving than I am”.

Do they have children?

Prior to getting into a relationship with Taylor-Johnson, Sam Taylor-Johnson had been married to art dealer and gallerist Jay Jopling. She and Jopling married in 1997, and together had two daughters - Angelica, born in 1997, and Jessie, born in 2007. The same month and year that Sam Taylor-Johnson met Taylor-Johnson, she and Jopling announced that they were separating after 11 years of marriage.

The couple said in a statement at the time: “Jay Jopling and Sam Taylor-Wood are saddened to announce that, after 11 years of marriage, they have agreed amicably to separate. No other parties are involved. For the sake of their two daughters, who are their priority, they have asked that their privacy be respected.”

Taylor-Johnson is stepfather to Sam Taylor-Johnson’s two daughters, and the couple welcomed two more daughters before they married, Wylda Rae 2010, and Romy Hero in 2012. The actor was 20 when his first child was born.

Speaking about their children to Harpers Bazaar in 2019, Taylor-Johnson said: “You’ll never see our children or any of our most personal moments on social media or in the press. We have our professional lives and our life together, and we keep them apart.”

What are the cheating rumours?

On 17 January, a video was posted on TikTok of an anonymous blind item which alleged that Taylor-Johnson had cheated on his wife with Bullet Train co-star Joey King. The blind item claimed that they had gotten together during the press tour for the film, and had continued to have an affair.

A blind item refers to a story in which the details of the matter are shared while the identities of the people involved are not revealed. Blind items were created by William d’Alton Mann, the publisher of Town Topics, who often used them for blackmail.

Given the nature of blind items, evidence or proof of the allegations are scarce, so it’s best to take the rumours with a pinch of salt. Neither Taylor-Johnson, his wife or King have responded to the claims.