Most celebrities don’t bother changing their names — or at least their stage names — when they marry, but Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson begged to differ. And instead of Sam merely taking Aaron’s last name, the couple decided to combine each other’s surnames.
“I just don’t see why women need to take the man’s name,” Aaron told the London Evening Standard in 2012. “I wanted to be a part of her just as much as she wanted to be part of me.” Upon changing, Aaron made sure that his subsequent projects bore the new name, with “Anna Karenina” being the first film that showcased “Aaron Taylor-Johnson.”
Read Related Also: I’ve been hit with the worst abuse of my career over Naked Education – trolls call me a paedophile, says Anna Richardson
“It was so important to me. Actually I wanted it on ‘Savages’ as well but they told me the posters had already gone out,” he told The Guardian in 2015. “Then they said: ‘Look, we hired Aaron Johnson.'” He also said he jumped through hoops to make people to recognize his new surname. “I said: ‘I want it changed! This is important.'” And when he saw his name in the credits for the first time, he mused that “it felt beautiful” and “it felt right.”
