Now here’s a surprise. We’ve just asked Aaron Johnson, the British star of this year’s superhero movie Kick-Ass, what his favourite website is. The reason? His new film Chatroom , out on December 24, deals with the ugly fallout when a group of sexed-up teenagers meet in cyberspace. Expecting a typical answer that any 20 year-old might give – Facebook , MySpace or Twitter – Johnson throws us a curve ball. “Primelocation.com,” he grins. “I’m always looking at houses! I think that’s my porn, I think!”

If this sounds a little strange for one so young, you have to consider that Johnson is advanced for his age. “I’m definitely an old soul,” he agrees. Never mind that he’s played a young Charlie Chaplin (in Shanghai Knights ) and the teenage John Lennon (in Nowhere Boy), with eight years in the film business already Johnson can consider himself a veteran.

Doubtless, spending his teenage years in the company of so many adults on film sets has impacted on Johnson – and not just on his fetish for property web-browsing. As anyone who reads the gossip pages will know, the actor is now the partner of artist – and Nowhere Boy director – Sam Taylor-Wood. He also became a father in July, when Taylor-Wood – who, at 43, is 23 years his senior – gave birth to their daughter Wylda Rae.

Still, he won’t be moving house anytime soon. Back in January, he and Taylor-Wood moved into a five-storey, eight-bedroom stucco property in the exclusive North London village of Primrose Hill (pictured, above) an area famed for its proliferation of actors and artists. Valued at £11 million – which Taylor-Wood was reported to have paid out in cash – the money was said to have come from the artist’s 2008 divorce settlement from millionaire art dealer Jay Jopling.

Yet while Johnson might love looking for houses on the web, he’s had his time on popular social networking sites too. “I used to have Facebook,” he says. “I don’t have it now. And before that, when I was in school, I had MySpace. I went through moments. But I never really got addicted to it, like the way other people did. I know the sort of people who do spend hours and hours on end on it, so I already had an insight. I think that was why when I read the script for Chatroom it drew me to the project.”

Raised in the ‘middle class/working class area’ of Amersham, in Buckinghamshire (as Johnson calls it), he went to a state school but never felt comfortable with his peers. “For me, what I’ve grown up around, made me mature a lot quicker than people in school my age, I suppose. I don’t know what my age is, if I’m honest. If you put me in a room with a bunch of people my age, I’d think they were five years younger than me.” No wonder he spends his time surfing primelocation.com.

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