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Barry Keoghan as John Lennon? Who Sam Mendes should cast in his Beatles movies

Following the news that Mendes will direct four fab films about the Fab Four, our critic picks his fantasy lineup

Keoghan has already played a scouser in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, and showed us his dance moves to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor (although Lennon, in fact the Beatles generally, were not dancers as such). Composite: GettyCanadian star Finn Wolfhard can do the baby-faced quality, the weirdly almost unformed innocence that defines the Beatles in their early years but could also do the watchful detachment and also injured resentment that complicates the George persona, as he had to see his creative contribution overlooked in favour of the Lennon/McCartney double-act. Melling could portray a deadpan insouciance from behind the drum kit, but he could amusingly fabricate Ringo’s wacky performance in the movie Help!, in the various black-and-white pastiche sequences, opposite Ian McKellen as Wilfrid Brambell.

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