Every romantic endeavour has to start somewhere, whether you accidentally bump into a person in the street, swipe right on a dating app, or meet them on the set of an Academy Award-nominated film about the biggest band of all time. For George Harrison and Pattie Boyd, their relationship spawned from the latter.
In the mid-1960s, The Beatles had expanded their creative interests from the world of music into film. They teamed up with director Richard Lester to create A Hard Day’s Night, a movie that condensed the experience of being a Beatle at the height of Beatlemania into just under 90 minutes. Expectedly, the film was a mammoth success, earning Oscar nominations and millions of dollars at the box office, but it had a far more personal impact on Harrison.
On set with his bandmates, the guitarist became acquainted with model Pattie Boyd, who had been cast in the film as a school girl who meets The Beatles while on a train. She only had a small part in the movie, not even receiving credit for her role, but she would come to have a much bigger part in Harrison’s life.
As the cast and crew reached the end of shooting, Harrison decided to shoot his shot with Boyd and asked her out. Recalling the experience during a chat with Ronnie Wood, Boyd shared, “At the end of filming – we were filming all day long – the train stopped at Paddington Station, and he said, ‘Oh, will you come out with me tonight?’”
Boyd had to decline Harrison’s offer, turning him down because she was already in a relationship. “And I said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I can’t. I have a boyfriend, and we’re going out, but you’re welcome to join us.’ Not what he wanted to hear at all,” she laughed.
Fortunately for Harrison, he would get another shot at asking Boyd out just one week later. The film called for reshoots, and Boyd returned to set a single woman. “It was amazingly lucky because we were all called back about a week later to do a bit more filming, and during that week, I fired the boyfriend,” Boyd remembered.
When they were reunited on set, Harrison asked how Boyd’s boyfriend was doing, prompting her to inform him of the break-up. He immediately asked her out once more, responding, “Oh good,” before uttering just four words that would kickstart their relationship, “Let’s go out tonight.”
“And that was it,” Boyd concluded, “We were together for ten years.” They married not long after in 1966, and Boyd saw Harrison through some of The Beatles’ biggest hits while she embarked upon a hugely successful modelling career and became a 1960s icon. Affairs and other issues eventually led the pair to part, divorcing in 1977.
