Nowhere Boy director Sam Taylor-Wood talks to Dawn Collinson about capturing a Liverpool legend’s childhood days on film

THERE was a quote which director Sam Taylor-Wood replayed over and over in her mind while she was filming the story of John Lennon’s teenage awakening.

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

It came from the man himself.

“And I actually wanted to run it at the front of the film, but it didn’t really work, so I kept it in my head and I’d remember it every so often when I was having palpitations.”

The nerves, the enormity of depicting a man so revered by millions, did weigh heavily, and, throughout the making of Nowhere Boy, it was all-but impossible to escape a sense of responsibility.

“There were times when I did feel like I’d walked into a minefield and there was this pressure, especially when we were shooting in Liverpool, to do good by their man.

“But I had to put the weight of the icon aside and forget really that it was about him because otherwise it was just too much. It was overwhelming,” she reflects.

“We were having to be sensitive to so many people and still tell a good story. It was always about finding the middle ground, so it was inevitable that someone somewhere would be upset. And I’m such a people-pleaser that I can’t bear that.

“A lot of people keep saying to me ‘How do you think Beatles fans will feel?’, but honestly I don’t know and it’s not a Beatles film. It’s not a biopic, for me it’s a coming-of-age film which is just embellished by who it is.”

Nowhere Boy is a first feature film for Sam, best known as a Turner Prize-nominated photographer and video artist who has made a highly successful career of immortalising the famous and infamous.

It endeavours, she explains, to “complete the puzzle backwards”, showing what emotional factors created the man who was to become a musical hero to millions. Most significantly, it focuses on the starkly contrasting relationships with his Aunt Mimi and his mother, Julia.

To piece the puzzle together, she approached the two people who played arguably the most influential roles in Lennon’s adult years.

Emails were sent to Yoko Ono and to Paul McCartney, who features in the film from that legendary St Peter’s fete meeting.

Both, says Sam, came back to offer their support.

“Throughout filming, I’d get random messages from Paul, completely out of the blue, just on details of things they’d recorded and little mannerisms of John,” she recalls. “They were fantastic, like these little golden nuggets that we were thrown, that no-one else could have given us.

“Yoko was really sweet and encouraging, but she stayed well away until she saw the film and then she was incredibly emotionally warm about it and that was the biggest, most important endorsement for me.

“She said to me that she appreciated the way we handled it so sensitively. She said to me ‘you must always remember that Mimi loved John and John loved Mimi’ and that was what we wanted to come across.

“We really needed to feel that she wasn’t some kind of fearsome dragon, she cared so much for John and she was trying to do the best in the way she knew how. It was a very different love from Julia’s, but it was a very powerful one.”

Yoko was also impressed by Aaron Johnson’s performance in the lead role.

She told the director she felt the 19-year-old relatively unknown actor totally embodied the spirit of John. “And because she knew and loved him probably more than anyone else, it meant more than anything.”

Sam similarly had no doubt from the moment the teenager walked into casting that he was the one they’d been looking for. She had seen more than 300 possibles, but there was only ever one definite.

“We really tried hard to find people who could act because a lot of people we saw were incredible look-alikes,” she says. “We’d just cross our fingers and think, please be able to act, please be able to act. But it became apparent that we had to start thinking, we’re not making Stars in their Eyes here, we’ve got to really just find people who are good actors who can capture the spirit of the person. When Aaron came for the audition, I knew in that instant it was going to be him.”

It was a feeling which stayed with her, and grew.