Aaron Johnson plays Lennon in 'Nowhere Boy'

Aaron Johnson plays Lennon in Nowhere Boy Image

(09-05) 04:00 PDT Park City, Utah –

After playing John Lennon in "Nowhere Boy," Aaron Johnson tore a page from the late Beatle's life. just as Lennon became involved with an artist much older than he was and felt artistically liberated by their relationship, the 20-year-old British actor fell in love with his 43-year-old director, Sam Taylor-Wood, a conceptual artist making her first film.

The couple's engagement and subsequent birth of their daughter has set tongues wagging across the Atlantic. but Johnson has been nonchalant about the age difference, telling People magazine, "I'm an old soul and she's a young soul."

when "Nowhere Boy" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Johnson went out of his way to credit Taylor-Wood for guiding him through what is sure to be his breakthrough performance.

"Sam gave me the energy to push myself and research as much as I could to do the best I could," he said, getting comfy in an easy chair in a hotel room. he played with the fur on his big floppy hat while he talked. With his scraggly hair, gray eyes and light complexion, Johnson doesn't especially look like Lennon. but you forget that a few minutes into the film because of the way he imitates his character's bravado.

Americans know Johnson because of "Kick-Ass" – he played teenage superhero Dave Lizewski in the recent adaptation of the comic book – and Brits watched him grow up on the London stage doing Shakespeare and Arthur Miller from the age of 6. but in "Nowhere Boy" he comes into his own showing how a teenage boy brimming with unfocused talent became John Lennon.

His performance won over one tough customer: Yoko Ono. "Sam speaks to Yoko quite a bit, and she has been very complimentary and supports our film," Johnson said.

Taylor-Wood's fascination with Lennon predates the movie. She and another artist collaborated to re-create the famous Annie Leibovitz photo of Lennon curled up on Yoko Ono's lap, standing in for the famous couple.

"Nowhere Boy" catches Lennon on the cusp of being famous. He's a 15-year-old living in a repressed household in Liverpool run by his constricting Aunt Mimi. One day he learns that his mother lives a mile away from him. She's a live wire in contrast to his prim aunt, and she encourages John's interest in music. so does a new friend by the name of Paul McCartney, who tells him if they are ever going to make money, they have to write their own stuff.

"It's a coming-of-age story about trying to find your own art and find love and about feeling kind of different in school and understanding that you have this creative mind and can't quite know how to express yourself," the actor said, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

While Johnson, who grew up in an intact home in Buckinghamshire, the son of a civil engineer and a homemaker, couldn't relate to Lennon's complicated family situation, he could relate to "the fact that I also was always trying to work out what my art form was and how my creative mind works," he said. Johnson wanted to be an actor "for as long as I can remember" and got the first part he tried out for, at age 6, playing a ghost in an improvised theater piece.

Multitasking

From then on he would spend many nights onstage in London's West end, then hop a train to the suburbs and be in class the next morning.

So Johnson was used to multitasking when he received the "Nowhere Boy" script before auditioning. he was shooting a movie at the time in which he played an American, and he had only lunch breaks to study Lennon's accent, mannerisms and body language.

He used an interview Lennon gave when the Beatles were just back in Liverpool after their transformative gig in Hamburg, Germany. The hometown crowd did not cheer them on.

"John said something like, 'The people from Liverpool thought we were just builders from Hamburg who speak very good English.' That was the line and the way he used it that stuck in my head," Johnson said.

For his audition he did the scene where John meets Paul. The filmmakers have not heard from McCartney, who is portrayed as a Goody Two-shoes.

"Whatever he thinks, he would want to keep under wraps because it would just go all over the place," Johnson believes.

The big discovery he and Taylor-Wood made was how free and loose Lennon became after reconnecting with his mother. That's how Johnson portrays him.

"He spent about two years with her. She became a friend – someone he looked up to and loved. She was a free spirit expressing things felt in music and art. he got the musical things from her. She taught him how to play the banjo, which he converted into the guitar. It was a whole new era going into the '60s, an experimental time," Johnson said.

When she died two years after they reconnected, "he went back to Mimi and he put the barriers up and tightened himself up. he put his anger and bitterness into his music."

John didn't smile

Watching videos of the Beatles performing, "John is the only one that doesn't have a smile on his face. everyone is shaking their head, and they got big smiles, and he was very tight-lipped. he strums like he is beating someone. his stance is with his legs very wide. he stands very still."

In a Rolling Stone interview Johnson uncovered, Lennon talks about how he was different around his mother than he was with his aunt, which is captured in "Nowhere Boy."

"He also says the Beatles were just a front. It was him hiding behind someone. when he got to the song 'Help,' he really was screaming for help."

Johnson believes Lennon changed again when he met Ono. "He found love with Yoko and became this wonderful free, expressive person. {sbox}

"Nowhere Boy" (R) opens Oct. 8 at Bay Area theaters.

To see a trailer for "Nowhere Boy," go to links.sfgate.com/ZKEM.

This article appeared on page Q – 22 of the San Francisco Chronicle