How Paul McCartney Really Felt About Sam Taylor Johnson's John Lennon Biopic

John Lennon first rose to fame as the founder, co-songwriter, and co-lead vocalist of the iconic rock band The Beatles. After he separated from the Beatles, Lennon continued his career as a solo singer and songwriter until his death in 1980. Given the raging success of The Beatles and the tragic circumstances of his death, Lennon’s life and career have been the source of inspiration for many movies over the years.

In 2009, 50 Shades of Grey director, Sam Taylor-Johnson decided to make a movie about John Lennon’s life story. However, the filmmaker wasn’t entirely truthful and took certain creative liberties when writing the story. Despite being involved in the production, Paul McCartney disagreed with many of Taylor-Johnson's choices and ended up not attending the premiere of the film.

In 2009, Sam Taylor-Johnson made her directorial feature film debut with Nowhere Boy, a film based on the early life experiences of John Lennon. Written by Matt Greenhalgh, the movie is based on Julia Baird's biography of the singer, titled Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon.

The movie dived into a part of Lennon’s life that not many knew about. It shed light on the musician’s complicated relationship with his mother, Julia, from whom he was alienated for much of his childhood and who ultimately died after being hit by a car when Lennon was only 17 years old. The movie also dives into the creation of The Beatles and their early days.

Nowhere Boy premiered at the London Film Festival in October 2009 and was released in British theaters in December of that same year. A year after its first screening, the film was released in the U.S. Ultimately, the film only made a little over $6.5 million worldwide, but it had plenty of critical success.

Sam Taylor-Johnson admitted that casting actors to play John Lennon and Paul McCartney in her biopic was extremely hard. But she was especially nervous about finding the right actor to portray McCartney, as she knew that the musician would be seeing the movie. “I thought, ‘Shoot, he’s going to see the film,’” the Fifty Shades of Grey director explained to the audience of Nowhere Boy at the Sundance Film Festival.

“It was difficult mostly because 70 people come in and look really like Lennon, McCartney, Harrison. So there are 70 look-alikes who come in and but I quickly had to decide early on not to go with the look-alikes necessarily because we weren’t making that type of film. It was an important decision that whoever was going to play these characters, that they embodied the soul and the spirit of the people. It wasn’t an impersonation,” she admitted.

Ultimately, she found the perfect Lennon in Aaron Taylor-Johnson. “It was tough. I saw Aaron probably eighth or ninth in the realm of casting. I knew he was right immediately but then I saw another 300 just to make sure,” she said. The then-18-year-old actor did such a great job embodying Lennon that he was complimented by both McCartney and Yoko Ono.

“Yoko saw the film and, the moment she saw it, she said, ‘I’ll give you the rights to ‘Mother.’ She was in tears. She and Paul were both complimentary of our performances and thought the film was great,” he said. “Who could have asked for anything more?” Johnson revealed in a 2010 interview for Collider.

Although he praised Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s performance as John Lennon, Paul McCartney didn't appreciate that Sam Taylor-Johnson took some creative liberties and altered Lennon’s life story for the movie. The director approached McCartney early on in the creation process to make the movie as close to reality as possible. However, the two clashed so much that McCartney ultimately rejected an invitation to the film’s premiere.

Firstly, McCartney didn’t appreciate the way Lennon’s Aunt Mimi was originally portrayed in the script and requested her character be re-written. “I said, ‘Sam, this isn’t true’,” McCartney revealed in a 2009 interview with Daily Mail. “Aunt Mimi was not cruel. She was mock strict. But she was a good heart who loved John madly.” Ultimately, Taylor-Johnson agreed to change the script to better portray Aunt Mimi’s personality.

The musician also didn’t appreciate that he was character was played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who he thought was too short. “But you know what I’m slightly peeved about? My character, my actor, is shorter than John! And I don’t like that. I’m the same size as John, please. Put John in a trench or put me in platforms,” McCartney once told Seven (via Contact Music). But this was not something that could be changed so easily, so Brodie-Sangster did end up playing McCartney in the film.