Trailer
Plot summary
John Lennon is five when he is taken from his mother, Julia, and raised in Liverpool by his aunt Mimi Smith and her husband George. John is close to his uncle, who dies when the boy is fourteen. At the funeral John sees Julia again, and he wants to know her. Julia has three daughters, and Mimi disapproves of the pair spending time together. A trip to Blackpool introduces John to rock and roll, and Julia shows him how to play the banjo. When John is suspended from school, Julia has him spend his days at her house so that Mimi will not learn of it. John wants to start a band of his own.
Cast
- James Johnsonas Stan
- James Jack Benthamas Rod Davis
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nowhere Boy (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson was in the middle of filming Kick-Ass in autumn 2008 while preparing to audition, looking up YouTube footage of Lennon on his lunch breaks to pick scenes he could do at the casting, which he got a day off to attend.
- Before landing on Johnson, Taylor-Johnson wanted singer Miles Kane for the lead after seeing him in an interview with bandmate Alex Turner and being struck by their Beatlesque appearance; the script was taken to Kane backstage at a Last Shadow Puppets show, but he passed.
- Initial media accounts said the film would be based on Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon by Lennon's half sister Julia Baird, but the finished film's credits reference neither the book nor Baird, giving sole writing credit to screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh.
- The director consulted both Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono about the script, and both firmly corrected the depiction of Mimi, pushing for her to be less strict and more loving of John.
- In his 2013 book Tune In, Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn criticized the accuracy of the scene in which Lennon is made to choose between Alfred and Julia, writing that the real choice was between his mostly absent dad's friend's parents and home and school back in Liverpool.
- The film received National Lottery funding of £1.2 million from the UK Film Council Premier Fund, with a further £35,500 from its Development Fund to create the script.
