The movie about Bruce Springsteen's early career, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, explores the neuroses and childhood experiences that drove the music of The Boss.
His tyrannical father and passive mother are shown in black-and-white flashbacks, and this complicated family dynamic leads to depression and a darkness that also fuels his artistic choices.
In the midst of Springsteen's creation of an iconic but risky album, Nebraska, the filmmakers have centered a romance with a character called "Faye." In the movie, Faye and her daughter represent where Springsteen came from; she is as far from the glamour of Hollywood as they come. She works at a diner and is a single mother raising a young child in his hometown of Asbury Park.
Her sunny disposition is a stark counterpart to the young Springsteen's brooding thoughts. So, it's not surprising that some fans root for the relationship to last. Sadly, in the movie, it does not, as Springsteen, obsessed with his music, pulls away from Faye and moves to Los Angeles. He's on the cusp of releasing Born in the USA, and his art has become his life. That's probably a good thing for fans of the music that was to come, but not so much for Faye.
That has many moviegoers wondering whether "Faye" and her daughter were real. Did Springsteen really have a girlfriend named Faye? The answer is no. According to People, the character (played by Odessa Young) was a composite of Springsteen's real-life love interests at the time.
In the movie, Springsteen, 31, is already famous. It's 1981. However, Born in the USA has not yet sent his fame soaring globally to the heights it is at today. The movie is based on a book by Warren Zanes.
The actress spoke to Stylist about the challenges of playing a fictional character in a movie where the other characters were real.
"It’s a different process from the other actors in the film who have real people to play and reference," she said. "I guess I ended up approaching Faye how I would normally approach any other fictional role – you’re given these clues and then you go off and you make it feel like a real person. It was both daunting and freeing."
She added that she did get some hints from Springsteen's real life.
"There are a couple of very casual mentions of certain people who could be Faye in Warren Zane’s book, Deliver Me From Nowhere, but I also took some cues from Bruce’s memoir (Born To Run)," Young told Stylist. "But there aren’t too many specifics to give people their privacy – I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardise that in any way. It wasn’t expected of me to model this person on something real, so I had a lot of creative freedom with Faye."
In fact, the character changed from the initial script to the film, she revealed in that interview.
According to People, the character does bear some resemblance to Springsteen's real-life wife, Patti Scialfa, because he met her years before they married at the Stone Pony concert hall (like Springsteen met Faye in the movie). Like Faye, he left Patti behind at first. In fact, he married someone else before circling back to Patti at the end. Today, they are married with three children.