Actors - John Lennon

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	Actors - John Lennon

John Winston Lennon (later John Winston Ono Lennon) (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was best known as a singer, songwriter, poet and guitarist for the British music group The Beatles. His creative career also included the roles of solo musician, peace activist, artist, actor and author. As half of the legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he heavily influenced the development of rock music, leading it towards more advanced multi-layered arrangements, mature lyrical sentiments, and musical eclecticism.

He is recognised as one of the greatest music icons of the 20th century and many of his songs, such as "Imagine" and "Strawberry Fields Forever", are often ranked among the best songs in popular music history. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, and the British public voted Lennon into 8th place.

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Lennon was born in Liverpool, on 9 October 1940. Both of his parents had musical backgrounds and experience, though neither pursued music seriously. Lennon lived with his parents in Liverpool until his father Alfred (nicknamed Alf, and later "Freddy"), a merchant seaman, walked out on the family when John was five years old (John later met with his father during his musical career). His mother Julia (under pressure from the local authorities) decided that she was unable to care for her son, and so gave him to her sister Mimi. Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived with his aunt Mimi and her husband George at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Liverpool.

Like much of the population of Liverpool, Lennon had some Irish heritage. His grandfather, James Lennon, was born in Dublin in 1858; and his grandmother, Mary (née Maguire), was Irish-born as well. John Lennon's mother, Julia (née Stanley), was of Welsh descent. Although she never knew in her lifetime, Julia was in fact lineally descended from Thomas, Lord Stanley (1435-1504), who commanded a wing of the army which overthrew Richard III at Bosworth Field in August 1485 . While Lennon had little exposure to his Irish heritage growing up, he came to identify with it later in life. He lived in the working class section of Liverpool, from which the Beatles emerged.

Lennon developed severe myopia as he grew up and was obliged to wear glasses in order to see clearly. During his early Beatles career, Lennon wore contacts or prescription sunglasses (or simply "toughed it out" without them). In 1966, on the set of How I Won The War, Lennon was issued a pair of National Health spectacles. He continued to wear these round, wire-rimmed glasses which became part of his iconic public image.

Although John lived apart from his mother, he still kept in contact with her through regular visits. During Lennon's younger years, Julia cultivated his lifelong interest in music by teaching him how to play the banjo. She had actually learned the instrument from John's father when they were dating, and when John began to play guitar, he started out playing the same four-string chords, leaving the bass strings untuned. It wasn't until Paul McCartney entered John's life that John began to learn proper guitar chords.

On 15 July 1958, when John was 17, Julia was killed after being struck by a car driven by a drunk off-duty police officer. Julia's death was one of the factors that cemented his friendship with McCartney, who had lost his own mother to breast cancer in 1956, when he was 14. The time of his mother's death was a very emotionally depressing time. Years later, Lennon wrote the songs "Julia", "Mother" and "My Mummy's Dead" regarding his mother, as well as naming his firstborn son, Julian, after her.

From 1951 to 1955, John attended his middle school, , by which he explained as the start of his misery. He started making cartoons mocking the teachers in an act of rebellion.

Though failing in grammar school, Lennon was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art with help from his school's headmaster and his Aunt Mimi. It was there that he met his future wife, Cynthia Powell. Lennon would steadily grow to hate the conformity of art school, which proved to be little different from his earlier school experience, and ultimately dropped out. He instead devoted himself to music, inspired by American Rock 'n' Roll and singers like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Little Richard. He had started a skiffle band in grammar school called the Quarry Men (after his alma mater, Quarry Bank School). With the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, the band changed to playing rock 'n' roll, taking the name "Johnny and the Moondogs", followed by "The Silver Beetles" (a tribute to Buddy Holly's Crickets), which was later shortened to The Beatles. He married Powell in 1962, after she became pregnant with Julian.

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Actors - John Lennon

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