- NEWS
- COMPETITION
- DIRECTORY
Richard Curtis was excited when Ed Sheeran agreed to be part of his new Beatles film Yesterday because he considers the singer to be like a son.
The British popstar portrays a version of himself in the movie, about the only man alive who can recall the songs of the Fab Four, and Curtis has now admitted Ed was the perfect choice to take on the role of the mentor in the narrative because he's such a down-to-earth guy.
"Ed's the son I never had," Curtis, who shares children Scarlett, Jake, Spike and Charlie with partner Emma Freud, told WENN. "I had orange hair when I was young, and Ed's got orange hair. The truth is that in some ways this film was about Ed, insofar as it's an Ed that hasn't succeeded, comes from Suffolk and is engaged to a girl he was at school with.
"They're all sorts of ingredients from Ed's life that were in my head because we've known him for years."
But it was a chat over dinner with Ed and director Danny Boyle that made Curtis realise the 28-year-old needed to be in the film.
"We were in Suffolk with Danny when Ed came over for supper and Danny said, 'You should be in the film. You should be the famous person who finds our not-famous person and helps him on his way’,” he recalled.
"I write in a little room facing out toward the creek at the beach and the sea in Suffolk. There's a lot of Ed in the story, as he comes from here. We love the accents and the names. This is very much where I wanted to set the film. It's a little part of England that you wouldn't expect a massive popstar like Ed to come from, had it not happened to him."
Yesterday, also featuring Himesh Patel, Lily James and Kate McKinnon, hits cinemas from 26 June.