Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle talks
to us about the Olympic Opening Ceremony,
The Beatles, and his new film, YesterdayI
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 beingDanny 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 FabJULY 2019 • 21by Anna Walker“I Still Have Great
Faith In People”
PAUL COOPER/SHUTTERSTOCK