JOHN LENNON’S “complicated” relationships with the two dominant women of his childhood are central to a new movie about his early life, the team behind the project said last night.

Sam Taylor-Wood, internationally-renowned photographer and Nowhere Boy’s director, was joined by the film’s stars at a press conference in Liverpool last night.

Filming started on location in the city this week, with newcomer Aaron Johnson as the teenage Lennon and former Shameless actress Anne-Marie Duff as his cherished mother, Julia.

Just four days into shooting, they refused to give much away about the script, but said Julia’s death would form a key scene in the film.

Taylor-Wood, who was nominated for a prestigious Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, said: “We see it as a seminal moment of his life.

“It influenced him to become what we know as John Lennon.”

The bio-pic covers the period from 1955-58, when Lennon was growing up in Woolton under the care of his Aunt Mimi, played by Hollywood star Kristin Scott Thomas.

It is loosely based on his half-sister Julia Baird’s biography Imagine This, which paints Mimi as a hypocritical battleaxe and their mother as a loving woman who struggled with depression.

Bafta-winning scriptwriter Matt Greenhalgh fleshed out the characters using additional accounts of the time.

Lennon was reunited with his mother as a teenager, although he did not return to live with her, and she was the one who bought him his first guitar.

Until Paul McCartney fixed it for him on the first day they met, it was tuned as a banjo – the instrument Julia herself played.

Ms Duff, an accomplished stage and television actress, has been taking music lessons to prepare her for the role.

Looking the part in a grey 1950s-style dress, she said: “I’m learning to play the banjo and I love it.

“It’s much more difficult than I expected but it’s always great to have something external that connects you with a character.”