Aaron Taylor-Johnson to be Honored With Locarno Film Festival Excellence Award

Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be feted by the Locarno Film Festival with its 2022 Excellence Award Davide Campari, which pays tribute to film personalities who are making their mark on contemporary cinema.

The British actor, who is 32, will receive the award on the evening of Aug. 3 in the Swiss festival’s outdoor Piazza Grande venue, where he will launch Locarno’s opening film “Bullet Train” directed by David Leitch, in which he stars alongside Brad Pitt among other high-caliber cast members.

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Taylor-Johnson is known for roles that span from his breakout performance playing John Lennon in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Nowhere Boy” in 2009 and the title character in Matthew Vaughn’s “Kick-Ass” in 2010, to Count Vronsky in Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina,” and MCU character Peter Maximoff in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”

In 2016 he scored a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for playing a psychopathic drifter in Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals.” Taylor-Johnson more recently landed key roles in “Godzilla” and Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet.”

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro praised him as “a young and extremely talented actor, able to speak to all audiences and to jump from one genre to another, driven by an extraordinary ability to always put himself on the line and take risks.”

He added that Taylor-Johnson is the perfect choice for this prize on the fest’s 75th anniversary edition, which “looks to the future.”

Previous Locarno Excellence Award recipients include Ethan Hawke, Mathieu Kassovitz, Edward Norton, John Malkovich, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert and Laetitia Casta.

The 75th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will run Aug. 3-14.

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