Given Wood’s wit and range, shown in roles from Sex Education to The White Lotus, she seems like the right Pattie for the job.
Kaia Gerber as Barbara Bach
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Kaia already has the Bond girl look, so who better to play Barbara Bach? Bach played Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me before meeting Ringer Starr on the set of the 1980 movie Caveman. They got married in London in 1981, just months after the death of John Lennon, and at their wedding, McCartney played piano, Harrison the guitar, and Starr drummed on an upside down ice bucket. They’ve been through it over the years, dealing with mobs of jealous fans and aggressive press attention, a near-death experience in a car crash, and entering rehab together in 1988. And with recent turns in Saturday Night, Bottoms, and the era-appropriate Palm Royale, Gerber could go toe-to-toe with Keoghan.
Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Japanese actor and singer Anna Sawai captured hearts and minds with her striking performance in Shōgun. (It made her the first actor of Asian descent to win in the best female lead category at the Emmys, and the first Japanese woman to win an Emmy at all.) So surely she’s the shoo-in for for the powerful, uncategorizable artist Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s partner. With the unfortunate accusation that she “broke up the Beatles” and her intense ties to Lennon’s emotional and creative trajectories, Ono’s role in the biopic will be major. Sawai’s emotional dexterity and deep character study work feel right for the part.
Honor Swinton Byrne as Linda McCartney
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Honor Swinton Byrne made her acclaimed debut in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir in 2019, balancing creative ambition, a doomed love affair, and delicate family dynamics in her role as film student Julie. It seems like Swinton Byrne, then, could make a compelling Linda McCartney—the photographer, musician, cookbook author, activist, and wife of Paul McCartney who passed away from breast cancer at just 56. Linda and Paul, who married in 1969, had a rather modern love story, navigating a turbulent relationship through the band’s stratospheric rise. Thinking of how Swinton Byrne performed opposite Tom Burke, the Linda-Paul dynamic would be electric.
Julia Garner as Maureen Starkey
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
She’d need a full hair transformation, but the Ozark and Inventing Anna actor Julia Garner has proved how chameleonic she can be, and she certainly possesses Maureen “Mo” Starkey’s frenetic spirit. Starkey is the Liverpudlian hairdresser who was Ringo Starr’s first wife, meeting him at the iconic Cavern Club where the band was playing. After the pair married in 1965, Starkey began a brief affair with George Harrison in 1972, and she and Starr divorced in 1975. She later died in 1994 following a battle with leukemia.
Daisy Edgar Jones as Olivia Harrison
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Daisy Edgar-Jones’s slate of 2025 projects, including On Swift Horses, looks to be character-driven, so taking on the role of Olivia Harrison, a music industry maven and Harrison’s widow, feels within her wheelhouse. In 1999, Olivia even saved her husband from a violent home invader!
Cailee Spaeny as Cynthia Lennon
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
As the star of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Cailee Spaeny glided effortlessly from the wide-eyed young Priscilla Beaulieu enamored by Elvis to a disillusioned and almost broken young woman. That feels right for whoever takes the role of Cynthia Lennon, the artist, author, and John Lennon’s first wife. The pair met in a calligraphy class at Liverpool College of Art, and Cynthia wrote two aching, gutsy memoirs—perfect for an actor to immerse herself in.
Lola Petticrew as Cilla Black
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
As Dolours Price in the excellent Say Nothing, Lola Petticrew was a compelling force, exploring Price’s emotional dimensions and electric relationship with her sister. (Later this year, they’ll star in the adaptation of the book Trespasses.) Petticrew would bring that dexterity to the cheeky, talented Cilla Black, the Scouse singer the Beatles championed early on.
Sadie Sink as Jane Asher
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Acclaimed English actor and author Jane Asher was also famously Paul McCartney’s (very young) girlfriend from 1963 to 1968. McCartney wrote the songs “And I Love Her,” “We Can Work It Out,” and “You Won’t See Me,” among others, about her; and she accompanied the band to Rishikesh, India, in early 1968, where they took part in an advanced transcendental meditation training session with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Asher and McCartney called off their engagement in 1968. Sadie Sink, with her similar experience as a very young and accomplished actor across film, television, and theater, could bring that breadth to Asher.
Kiernan Shipka as Stella McCartney
PARIS, FRANCE РFEBRUARY 29: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY РFor Non-Editorial use please seek approval from Fashion House) Kiernan Shipka attends the Chlo̩ Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on February 29, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale РCorbis/Corbis via Getty Images)Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Depending on the chronology of these biopics and how much time-hopping we’ll be doing, a young Stella McCartney could readily be found in McCartney muse Kiernan Shipka.
Esther Rose McGregor as Astrid Kirchherr
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
The Babygirl star and model for Celine and Miu Miu (and daughter of Ewan McGregor) has long orbited the world of celebrity, and so could find the rhythm of a photographer who traced the Beatles’ stratospheric rise with her lens. McGregor has a quiet confidence that could be a good match for Kirchherr’s assured sensibility.
Zendaya as Ronnie Spector
Zendaya The Gothams 34th Annual Film Awards – ArrivalsPhoto: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Okay, cheating here a little, as Zendaya has already been cast as Ronnie Spector in Barry Jenkins’s biopic of the iconic singer and lead of the ’60s girl group the Ronettes. Spector met the Beatles in London in 1964, and her crew became the first and only girl group to open for them. Given Spector developed a strong friendship with Lennon, she could feature in his biopic.
Haim as The Apple Scruffs
Photo: Getty Images
