A self-declared feminist who grows his own kale - and is happiest playing house-husband to his famous director wife (who's 24 years his senior) - is Aaron Taylor-Johnson the most right-on 007 ever?

Do we finally know the name of the next James Bond? Yesterday it was reported that the big beasts tipped as 007 favourites for the past year — Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, James Norton, Henry Cavil — have been passed over in favour of comparative unknown Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 33, who apparently has the contract in his hand.

A source said: ‘Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it. The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back.’ If true — and reports are still conflicting — he will be the eighth actor to step into James Bond’s Crockett & Jones Oxford shoes after Daniel Craig vacated them.

What’s certain is that Bond producer ­Barbara Broccoli had a secret meeting with Taylor-Johnson last March, and she reportedly liked him and vice versa. Despite denying she’d settled the 007 casting, Broccoli also said the next Bond would be a man, a Brit, and young enough to commit to the role for 15 years. Taylor-Johnson ticks all those boxes perfectly.

A chiselled Aaron Taylor Johnson posing for Calvin Klein in its 2023 advertising campaign

Bond film producers previously said the next 007 would be a man, a Brit and young enough to commit to the role for 15 years - Taylor-Johnson ticks those boxes perfectly

Responding to the rumours last week, he offered a non-denial: ‘I find it ­charming and wonderful that people see me in that role. I take it as a great compliment.’

Perhaps predictably, among diehard Bond fans, the rumours were proving ­controversial yesterday. It is worth remembering that every new 007 has had his detractors at first. Daniel Craig? Too blond. Roger Moore? Too pretty. Sean Connery? Too rough. Pierce Brosnan? Too nice. George Lazenby? Too obnoxious.

So why is Aaron not right to play Ian Fleming’s famously rakish spy? They say he’s not handsome enough, that his hair is too curly. I’ve even seen it said online, depressingly, that his Jewish-Russian ­heritage makes him ‘not British enough’.

Try telling that to fans of Brosnan, who was born and raised in Ireland.

Many say he’s too ­feminist or even too ‘woke’ — after all, has a Bond actor ever spent months being a happy house-husband (of which more later), or taken his wife’s surname upon marriage?

Sam while pregnant with her third child and wearing her OBE medal in 2011, with Aaron and her daughters from her first marriage - Angelica, right, and Jessie

 The couple have had two daughters together: Wylda Rae 13, pictured, and Romy Hero, 11

My personal and only minor objection, having met him briefly at the Baftas last month, is that he’s not very tall — well under 6ft — and Sean Connery, for many the Bond of Bonds, was a strapping 6ft 2in. But casting directors can solve that one by finding Bond girls who do not tower over him.

Whoever gets the role, it’s going to be a crucial moment of ­re-set for the franchise, following the death of Craig’s James Bond in No Time To Die.

Can 007 simply rise from the dead? Some sources say no, and that the favoured option is to go back to the 1950s and start again. Fleming’s 12 Bond novels, beginning with Casino Royale, and his two collections of short stories ­featuring the spy, are all set in the period 1951 to 1964. Others believe Barbara and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson — the pair who have been in charge of the movies for 30 years — share a view that Bond can and will only go ­forward into the future.

As yet there is still no script, I’m told, and though the Bond role is unique in cinema for its iconic status beyond any single, individual film, an actor might expect to see one before formally ­committing to a role.

Neither is there a director attached to the next Bond outing, although Brit Gareth Edwards, of Rogue One and The Creator, is the hot favourite among the franchise’s fans.

Hints about the spy’s future direction from within the Bond camp itself have been tentative. In October, Broccoli talked about ‘a big, big road ahead, re-inventing it for the next chapter’, and added: ‘We haven’t even begun with that.’ A couple of weeks ago, she said: ‘No, no, nothing is happening yet.’

Could she have been fibbing? She’s had 30 years of playing the Bond cards close to her chest, and one shouldn’t read too much into the denials. Happily for Aaron Taylor-Johnson, she is not swayed by the chatter of public forums, either.

So who is her possible Bond-in-waiting — and has he got what it takes to

re-invent the most famous spy in ­cinematic history?

Perhaps the most surprising fact about Taylor-Johnson is that he is a stage-school kid. Born in 1990 to civil engineer Robert Johnson and stay-at-home mum Sarah, he was raised in middle-class High Wycombe, Bucks, and seems to have wanted to act since he was a tot.

He joined the local Jackie Palmer Stage School when he was six, and soon appeared on stage for the first time. Other Jackie Palmer alumni from this period include Eddie Redmayne and James Corden. On the syllabus: drama, jazz, singing, tap dance and acrobatics. A recent video of him attempting backflips — a legacy from stage-school days — has notched up over 500,000 views online.

His first proper role was in a London production of Macbeth, as Macduff’s son, when he was eight. There was a role on The Bill — hasn’t everyone been on The Bill? — and he played a teenage version of Edward Norton’s character in The ­Illusionist when he was 16. He also filmed adverts for Persil and Rowntree’s.

But the role of his life, in more ways than one, came in 2008, when he was 18. Then he was cast as the lead in the John ­Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy — and fell instantly for its director, Sam Taylor-Wood.

She is 24 years his senior — now 57 to his 33. At the time of Aaron’s first audition, her marriage to the ­millionaire art dealer and gallerist Jay Jopling had just ended.

He said: ‘I remember it very, very clearly. I know exactly what she was wearing. This white shirt that she still has, that I love.’

Rocking a tux, Aaron already seemed comfortable with the 007 suave look - here with wife Sam at the 30th annual London Film Critics' Circle Awards in 2009

He added: ‘When I met Sam, I’d already lived a life far beyond that of most of my contemporaries — I didn’t relate to anyone my age. I just feel that we’re on the same wavelength.’

The actor and director shared an ‘intense connection’ but kept their relationship strictly professional until the film had wrapped. Sam said: ‘As soon as we finished, he told me he was going to marry me. We had never been on a date, or even kissed.’

Sam has enjoyed a hugely successful filmmaking career with movies such as Fifty Shades Of Grey and has also directed the upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black

They announced their plans to marry at the film’s premiere.

In 2019, Aaron 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.’

In another interview he explained: ‘I don’t really analyse our relationship. I just know that it works. I just feel secure and loved and safe. We have this very deep connection. We’re in sync.’

Unusually the besotted groom opted to take one part of his wife’s names, Taylor, when they married — so they both became Taylor-Johnson.

‘I just don’t see why women need to take the man’s name. I wanted to be a part of her as much as she wanted to be part of me,’ he said.

In fact, there is no more conspicuously lovey-dovey couple in showbusiness.

When Sam celebrated her 50th birthday in 2017, Aaron had her name tattooed on his chest alongside a hummingbird. She had his name inked on her collarbone in June 2021.

The following year they celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary by renewing their vows.

Actor Aaron, now 33, met the filmmaker, 58, on the set of Nowhere Boy when he was just 18 and director Sam was 42. They didn't get together until after they finished the project, later marrying in 2012

Aaron wrote on Instagram: ‘We confessed our love in front of our nearest and dearest friends and family. It was a celebration of love and joy. A decade of marriage. It was a magical unforgettable day and the sun did not stop shining on us both.’

He went on to say that he was ‘blessed beyond belief’, adding: ‘Sammy you are my love, my life, my soulmate, my wife, my world!’

She wrote: ‘Ten glorious years. I love you, I love you, I love you. Love conquers all.’

Was that last phrase a reference to the 24-year age gap? Certainly, it has brought a lot of negative focus on the relationship and they have had to endure cruel chatter throughout their years together.

Aaron has dismissed the detractors, saying: ‘That’s their problem, their issues and however they perceive life. I live my life to its fullest. I operate from my instincts and I try to be as open as possible.’

His wife adds: ‘The amount of men I know with the same age gap that we have — how come no one says anything about that?’

In the early years, home was a £13 million pile in Primrose Hill, North London. Aaron saw movie success as weedy hero Dave ­Lizewski in comedy Kick-Ass, but he also gladly spent extended ­periods as a house-husband, looking after their daughters Wylda Rae, now 13, and Romy Hero, 11, plus the two daughters Sam has from her marriage to Jopling — Jessie, now 16, and Angelica, 26.

At one point, the school run was so complex — involving drop-offs at four separate schools — that both Aaron and Sam had to do it.

In 2013, Sam took on the direction of Fifty Shades Of Grey in Canada, and took her family along for the duration. Aaron was happy to be in a supporting role. ‘He’s like: “No no, I like being an at-home dad, doing the cooking,” ’ Sam said.

He agreed: ‘I wanted, purely, to be with my babies, I didn’t want to be away from them. I battled with what that would be like.’

The family then spent some time in Los Angeles, while Aaron acted in a couple of Marvel films and won acclaim for his role in Tom Ford’s 2016 drama Nocturnal Animals.

In 2022 they returned to the UK, putting down roots in a listed rural farmhouse in Somerset.

He has settled into country life, saying earlier this year: ‘I get the opportunity to fly around the world and meet new people. It’s very glamorous and I work on great projects. But when I’m home in the countryside . . . that’s my place where I can put my feet in the earth and feel grounded.’

He added: ‘I have got kale and things like that; I had pumpkins last season. I have chickens, I have two pigs, I’ve got two cows. I very much have sort of a homestead.’

Now that the children are older, Taylor-Johnson has started to work more, although they are still at the centre of his life and his daily routine. He rises at 5.30am, meditates, works out for an hour, and then does the school run.

After making the comedy thriller Bullet Train with Brad Pitt, released in 2022, he is soon to be seen in a similar comic role in The Fall Guy, playing an egotistical actor — a foil to Ryan Gosling’s affable stunt man.

He’s also taken on a major ­Marvel franchise, starring as villain Kraven The Hunter, who acquires the speed, strength and senses of a jungle cat after he has drunk a herbal potion.

That Sony Pictures film will be released this summer and see him largely stripped to the waist. ‘The costume is my stomach and my arms,’ he said.

The hard training required to get into shape for that role has certainly paid off: Taylor-Johnson’s abs were on display to spectacular effect in both a Calvin Klein campaign in 2023 and an Armani ­perfume ad this year. Both rather set social media alight and certainly prove he will be a hunkier Bond than even Daniel Craig.

Taylor-Johnson’s friend Jamie Dornan, who was the face of Calvin Klein pants himself back in

2014, wrote online: ‘You really should have got yourself in better shape for this. Did you forget about it or something?’

One fan wrote: ‘I got pregnant after watching this video, and I’m a man.’ Not that they were Taylor-Johnson’s first outings as a model: in 2017 he led a fragrance campaign for Givenchy as a brand ambassador, for which he also won fans for his smouldering looks.

A friend who knows the actor says that, when it comes to Bond, the big question is probably whether he really thinks the job is right for him.

‘He’s a very serious young man, very polite but a bit muted,’ they said. ‘He’s more comfortable with Sam being the big star. It’s a ­question whether he would want to put himself into that bracket.’