Highlights
- Taron Egerton says he hasn’t spoken to his father “for a number of years” despite a childhood bond.
- The actor calls Colin Firth a “fatherly figure,” recalling a kind text after seeing him in Rocketman.
- Egerton also admits he “starved” himself and felt “self-loathing” prepping his body for Netflix’s Apex.
Taron Egerton wants you to know two things: he loves his father, and he also cannot be within a hundred miles of him, emotionally speaking. Welcome to the most British estrangement story of the year.
The 36-year-old Welsh heartthrob sat down with Dax Shepard on Monday’s Armchair Expert (watch and listen below) and, in classic pod-confessional fashion, cracked open a door most publicists would nail shut.
“My father and I, when I was growing up, were able to maintain a fairly kind of functional relationship,” Egerton said. “As I got older, that became more difficult and I haven’t spoken to him for a number of years now.”
Translation: this isn’t a fresh wound. It’s an old one that’s calcified into silence.
He’s not interested in airing dirty laundry, either. “I’m reluctant to talk in too much detail about him because he’s living his own life and doing his own thing,” Egerton said — a line so diplomatically British it should come with a cup of tea.
But he did let one thing slip: the guilt math. His father was only 23 when Egerton was born, thirteen years younger than Egerton is now. “I’m already 13 years older than he was when he had me,” he mused, sounding less like a man nursing a grudge and more like one doing therapy-brain arithmetic in real time.
And yes — despite the silence — “I’ll always love him, I just don’t think we work very well in terms of our relationship.” Boundaries: even estrangement has manners now.
Colin Firth, meanwhile, has apparently been quietly cosplaying as Dad this whole time. “He was always lovely to me… he’s such a generous, kind man,” Egerton said of his Kingsman co-star, who reportedly texted him “you are note perfect” after seeing Rocketman. A better parenting review than most biological fathers get.
But the family stuff was just the appetizer. Egerton also copped to what his film, Apex, actually cost him physically.
“The truth of the matter is that I starved myself,” he admitted. “I was running myself absolutely ragged to get there.”
He described being “filled with self-loathing” during the shirtless scenes, admitting he “couldn’t enjoy it at the time” because his sense of perspective was shot. A friend, mercifully, told him his job was to “smash” that idealized version of himself — not chase it forever.
Director Baltasar Kormákur has separately confirmed the shoot was borderline reckless — cliff dives from 32 feet, done eight times, no doubles. Co-star Charlize Theron needed two surgeries after.
So: an absent father, a starved body, and a career built on convincing everyone he’s fine. Hollywood’s favorite trilogy.
Egerton says it’s “not that deep” now. Sure, Taron. Neither is therapy, apparently — you just do it on a podcast with forty million listeners.
