Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s Stephen Graham on fatherhood, authenticity, and bringing The Boss’s dad to life

What is it about Stephen Graham and devastating, despairing dads?

The Merseyside actor, famed for his roles in This Is England and The Irishman, has already wrenched our hearts this year with the Emmy-award winning Adolescence for Netflix, in which he played a despondent parent facing up to the truth that his son is a murderer. And now he’s taking on the role of an altogether different — but equally damaged — dad as Doug Springsteen, the father of superstar rock ‘n’ roll icon Bruce Springsteen, in this week’s beautiful, emotionally-charged biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.

It’s a film more ‘Bruce’ than ‘The Boss’ — rather than the cradle-to-grave narrative we usually see from true-story musician’s tales brought to the silver screen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass) focusses on a relatively slim, soul-searching period in Springsteen’s life.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere | Official Trailer - YouTube

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In 1981, on the cusp of mega-stardom following the release and tour for album The River, Springsteen (here played pitch-perfectly by Jeremy Allen White), retreats to Colts Neck, New Jersey, close to where he grew up, to regroup and begin plans for a follow up album.

But feeling removed from his roots, and having ignored years of pent up trauma relating to his difficult (and sometimes abusive) relationship with his father, Bruce finds himself spiralling into depression. It leads to a hyper-fixation on a group of new songs — recorded low-fi on a 4-track tape recorder in his bedroom — that become not only the basis for the world-beating Born in the U.S.A album, but crucially Nebraska — the mournful, stripped-back, acoustic album often heralded as Springsteen’s best, but one he had to fight tooth and nail for to ever see released by his record company.

"It's universal"

The film cuts between this critical juncture in Bruce’s life, and black and white vignettes from his childhood, in which Stephen Graham’s Doug ‘Dutch’ Springsteen looms domineeringly over every aspect of the young Bruce’s upbringing.

For Graham, it’s another opportunity to explore the complexities of the father/son relationship.

“There are so many of these stories to tell,” he tells Shortlist as we sit in a Claridge’s hotel suite a million miles from the life Doug Springsteen would have recognised.

“I’m in that part of my career where I am a father. I've been doing it for 20 years, you know what I mean? Well, I'm having a go at doing it anyway. There’s experience that I can bring to the table.”

The roles, Stephen believes, resonate so profoundly with viewers because — for better or worse — they are relatable.

“I think it's universal in many ways,” he explains.

“Most people have children. Most people are fathers. Or we kind of have a father figure in our lives, or we have a relationship with people who are, or you're an uncle. You can relate to it in any way, shape or form.

“But let's be honest about it, let's look at King Lear. It's been going on for a while! We’ve been telling stories about fathers for a long time. I feel very fortunate myself now that I'm in a position where I can be a part of that storytelling tradition.”

Graham brings an imposing physicality to the role — Doug, a blue-collar worker with clear-cut ideas about masculinity, with the young Bruce having to drag him away from dive bars, and defend against intense sparring sessions that cross over into plain domestic abuse and violence.

“My duty, my obligation, is to try and play this character as truthfully and as honestly as I can,” says Graham.

“Then you're in that collaborative process with our wonderful director, Scott Cooper. We'd have nice conversations — and I was fortunate to be able to go to the well, because my source was there, Bruce was there. So I'd have little conversations with Bruce.”

Springsteen has been incredibly complimentary about Graham’s performance.

“Stephen just naturally inhabited his skin and his soul, particularly as an older man,” Springsteen said at a recent Q+A at Spotify’s London HQ in support of the film.

But for Graham, the transformation was a team effort.

“It was back in the elements of the costume fitting,” where Graham really felt himself inhabit the character.

“I'm a big one for shoes, you know what I mean? I like to walk in the shoes of my character.

“And then our costume designers [Brittany Loar / Kasia Walicka Maimone] were magnificent. We found this wonderful jacket, and I think it was a period original. And I just remember putting this jacket on — I think we were in New Jersey — and then the kind of the walk and the swagger kind of came, and that kind of heaviness, and that weight of Doug just started to appear.

“The external things help hugely for the physicality element of it. But then when it's bringing it internal, it's all about what happens in the room, in the space with the people you’re working opposite.”

My Father's House

By the film’s conclusion, Doug is broken down — overweight, aged, and wracked by mental health difficulties. But with father and son having each walked the seven circles, a reconciliation of sorts becomes possible. Though not possible in the confines of the story being told, it’s here where Graham would have liked more room to explore Doug.

“I would have liked to have seen elements, maybe one kind of moment, where Doug wasn't so melancholic. I understand why it wasn't there. I think there were conversations about the possibilities of it being there — but there weren’t truly many of those moments for Doug and Bruce,” he recalls.

“I know they went fishing one time, that's in the book, and that was a fun experience. But that was later on. From the knowledge I have, I don't remember there being any kind of real memorable moments of brightness for Bruce as a kid.

“But I think I would have liked to have just seen a side to him where maybe he was smiling — but then Doug didn't smile. He didn't have that, not until later, much later on in his life.”

It’s a gut punch of a movie, even if it ends on a redemptive, hopeful note. But does the weight of such heavy roles stay with an actor, so committed to the part, once filming concludes? Graham has witnessed some of the best — perhaps even most notorious — in the business become immersed in their roles, and been blown away.

“I've worked with the best method actor in the world, which is Daniel Day Lewis, who is phenomenal,” says Graham.

“I've watched and I've learned from Daniel, and in that respect, I admire him hugely. And for me, my process is to take what I watched and observed from him, and learn from him, and just throw it into that bit of the job there and then come out.

“And I'm a fan of actors as well. I love watching actors in rehearsals. Now and again, I've gone, ‘Oh, wow, that's brilliant what you're doing’. And I've seen people go, ‘What?’ And I'm like, ’No, no, what you're doing. You see that? You see what he's doing?’”

But Graham’s found his own way to step back into his own skin with relative ease.

“I've got a wonderful family, and crew,” he explains.

“For me, personally, I'm only speaking for myself, I've developed an ability now where I can dive in, do a deep dive, and come up for air as soon as we say cut, more or less.

“I've developed over the years my kind of method. But right up until I'm getting ready or turning over, I can have a laugh. And, you know, I had little Matthew [Pellicano Jr., who plays young Bruce]. I had a wonderful little young boy — it was his first experience of being on a film set. Same with our Owen [Cooper, co-star on Adolescence]. It was the same kind of thing. You're taking care of them as well — as Stephen — and having fun with them and having a laugh with them. But then when it comes to getting ready to turn over, you go into it and you do it, but then you come out and you're taking care of them again, making sure they're sweet. But also making sure I'm sweet, also making sure everyone else is alright, you know what I mean?

“And it's that kind of thing — it's a collective. You do it as a collective.”

Reason to Believe

There’s a selflessness to how Graham talks about his process — a humility that talks around what could be a very gruelling endeavor. And that generosity extends to recognising the effect his work is having on people — he’s working on a new book called Letters to Our Sons, directly influenced by the impact Adolescence has had, asking fathers to write to their sons to create the bonds for future generations that were so lacking in Springsteen’s.

But through the exploration of all that trauma, how does Stephen Graham now see himself?

“Stephen loves to skip to school, you know what I mean? Stephen really likes to go on. Stephen likes going to work. I'm a fan of how we do this thing. I love it. I love being with a crew. It's the best place in the world. Where else can you get to be a part of a whole circus that's doing this kind of thing? It's what I've wanted to do since I was ten.

“I get a buzz out of it. I'm a fan of watching problems and solutions get solved by the gaffer and the DOP, with a bit of tape. It's just amazing, it's a wonderful experience to be a part of something like this. Long may it continue.”

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere hits cinemas on October 24th, 2025

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