John Lennon’s teenage years and first steps towards Beatlemania were captured last year on Nowhere boy. Based on the book Imagine this: Growing up with my brother John Lennon by Julia Baird, Lennon’s half sister and with funding from the Lottery fund and a grant from Film4, the film hit the cinema’s in October ’09.
Released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 26th April 2010, Nowhere boy stars Kristen Scott Thomas as Lennon’s aunt Mimi and Anne-Marie Duff as his mother Julia. Lennon is played by British actor Aaron Johnson and his boyhood friend Paul McCartney is played by Thomas Sangster.
Following the story of his relationship with his Aunt Mimi, who had raised him from the age of 5, and his mother Julia, who had given him up into Mimi’s care, Nowhere boy attempts to chart the formation of John Lennon’s musical roots.
It also introduces Lennon’s early friendship with Paul McCartney and the formation of their first band, The Quarrymen, when Lennon was just sixteen before they became The Beatles in 1960 – when I was sixteen I was a sixth-form drop out door-to-door windows salesman.
