Reader’s Digest UK – July 2019

Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle talks

to us about the Olympic Opening Ceremony,

The Beatles, and his new film, Yesterday

I

t’s 1964. Danny Boyle is eight

years old and through the

floorboards of his childhood

home in Lancashire, he can hear his

parents listening to Beatles records.

He should be sleeping, but he’s awake

pretending to be John Lennon. His

twin sister, Maria, is Paul McCartney

and his younger sister, Bernadette, is

George. Or Ringo. Or maybe both at

once. They didn’t really care. All they

knew was that The Beatles were cool.

Danny, now 62, tells me this story

gleefully, propelling berries from a

neatly laid fruit platter into his mouth

as he does so. We’re sat in London’s

elegant Soho Hotel, but despite being

Danny Boyle:

one of Hollywood’s heavyweights—

the Academy Award-winning director

of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire

and 127 Hours—Danny isn’t one for

ceremony. Throughout the interview

he offers me food, asks me about

myself with genuine interest and

before we begin I hear him quietly

turn down the offer of a taxi home,

insisting that he’d prefer to take the

tube (he’s lived in Mile End for nearly

40 years). There’s something Peter-

Pan-esque about him—a boyish

quality, that assures you those days

of miming to Beatles records don’t

feel so distant.

With his memories of the Fab

JULY 2019 • 21

by Anna Walker

“I Still Have Great

Faith In People”

PAUL COOPER/SHUTTERSTOCK