As a child actor, he performed in films including Shanghai Knights (2003), The Illusionist (2006), and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008).

He had his breakthrough performance as John Lennon in the biopic Nowhere Boy (2009), directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he married in 2012 and adopted the same surname (Taylor-Johnson) with.

He followed this with roles in the crime thriller Savages (2012), period drama Anna Karenina (2012), and monster film Godzilla (2014).

[2][3][4] His father, Robert, was a civil engineer and his mother, Sarah, "stayed at home [and] worked odd jobs here and there so [they] could get by.

His television roles have included Niker in the 2004 BBC adaptation of the novel Feather Boy, Aaron in Danny Brocklehurst's ITV1 serial Talk to Me, and Owen Stephens in Nearly Famous.

Johnson appeared as John Lennon in the 2009 biographical film Nowhere Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he later married.

In 2010, Johnson appeared as David "Dave" Lizewski/Kick-Ass, the lead character in Kick-Ass, based on the superhero comic book of the same name by Scottish writer Mark Millar.

[22] Taylor-Johnson first appeared as the character in a post-credits scene of the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).

In 2017, he played an American soldier (alongside John Cena) in Doug Liman's thriller The Wall,[24] and in 2018, he appeared in Outlaw King, a British-American historical action drama about Robert the Bruce and the Wars of Scottish Independence.

[25] In 2022, he appeared in David Leitch's Bullet Train, an action-thriller film based on the novel Mariabītoru by Kōtarō Isaka.

[41] Taylor-Johnson lives with his wife and their four daughters on a farm near Bruton, Somerset, and he is an avid vegetable farmer.