It's become somewhat of a Hollywood custom for a young, ambitious actor to take on the daunting task of portraying a real-life music icon on the big screen: Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury (which won him the Best ActorOscar), Jennifer Lopez as Selena,Taron Egerton as Elton John, Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett, Austin Butler as Elvis Presley, Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, the list goes on and on. The latest on that ever-growing list is Emmy winner Jeremy Allen White (The Bear, Shameless) as the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, in Scott Cooper's new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.
Unlike its biopic predecessors, however, Deliver Me from Nowhere— which hits theaters stateside on Friday, Oct. 24 — doesn't go the traditional cradle-to-grave story route. (Thankfully, the real-life Bruce is very much still alive and well and selling out stadiums, as he should be.) Rather, the film focuses largely on just one portion of the rock legend's life in the early 1980s, as he's juggling both professional pressures — with his record label pushing the artist to replicate the chart-topping success of his "Hungry Heart"-led album The River — and personal concerns, from his troubled relationship with his father (played by Adolescence great Stephen Graham) to an intimate romance with a small-town single mom (Odessa Young).
Given that world-famous subject, Deliver Me from Nowhere audiences will no doubt be wondering which aspects of Springsteen's life the movie gets right, and which are simply made up for dramatic sake. Here’s what is fact and what is fiction within Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.
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Is Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere based on a true story?
Yes, the new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is inspired by the life and work of legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, particularly the making of his seminal 1982 record Nebraska (which features such famous songs as "Atlantic City," "Nebraska" and "Johnny 99"). However, some details about that period have been fictionalized and dramatized for storytelling purposes.
The film is a big-screen adaptation of the 2023 book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes, which includes interviews with Springsteen's closest collaborators (like Steven Van Zandt) as well as the man himself.
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere20th Century Studios
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Per the official film synopsis, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere sees New Jersey-born Bruce Springsteen "on the cusp of global superstardom" as he "struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past as he records the album Nebraska in the early 1980s."
As the blue collar rocker contends with mental health struggles and painful personal memories, he records the raw, haunting acoustic album on a four-track recorder in a makeshift studio inside his Colts Neck, N.J., bedroom, much to the chagrin and confusion of Columbia Records' music executives, who are all expecting radio-friendly hits from the popular performer.
Written and directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), Deliver Me from Nowhere features Jeremy Allen White in the titular role, with an ensemble that includes Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron and David Krumholtz.
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Did Bruce Springsteen have a bad relationship with his father?
Stephen Graham as Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere20th Century Studios
Yes, as depicted in the film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Bruce Springsteen's IRL relationship with his father Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen was an emotionally fraught one, marked by verbal and physical abuse as well as the latter man's alcoholism and mental illness.
The biopic explores that troubled connection, utilizing frequent black and white flashbacks to recount the singer's 1950s childhood in working-class New Jersey (with Stephen Graham as Doug and Matthew Anthony Pellicano as a young Bruce) interspersed with scenes of both men as adults decades later in the '80s. Deliver Me From Nowhere shows Bruce seemingly processing the volatile nature and lingering trauma of his upbringing through the making of Nebraska.
Bruce Springsteen, Jeremy Allen White and Matthew Anthony Pellicano pose for a photo on the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere in Freehold, N.J., on Jan. 10, 2025.Photo by Bobby Bank on Getty Images
“He loved me, but couldn’t stand me,” the real-life Bruce wrote of his father in his 2016 memoir Born to Run, opening up about his dad's struggles with addiction and schizophrenia. “When my dad looked at me,” Springsteen shared in the autobiography, “he didn’t see what he needed to see. This was my crime.”
Bruce later reconciled with his father as an adult, which is represented in a scene of Graham's character coming to visit his rockstar son during the Born to Run tour.
Related: Bruce Springsteen Makes Surprising Admission About a Fear He Had Early in His Career
Yes, Bruce Springsteen has battled depression for decades, and his internal struggle gives the movie much of its emotional heft. As in the film, Springsteen has publicly shared how music served as both a creative and personal outlet for helping him deal with his mental illness and how he was supported in seeking out professional help via therapy and antidepressants by this then-manager (played onscreen by Successionstar Jeremy Strong).
"By the time I came out of Born in the U.S.A., I’d been in two years of analysis because I had a pretty good breakdown back when I was 32," he said during an appearance on the Hollywood Reporter podcast Awards Chatter. "My family was filled with mental illness — my aunts, my uncles, my pop — and it just was in our blood, so I had to deal with it, too."
Related: Jeremy Allen White Says Not Everyone Will Be ‘Happy’ With His Portrayal of Bruce Springsteen
Who is Springsteen's love interest Faye in Deliver Me from Nowhere?
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen and Odessa Young as Faye in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere20th Century Studios
In the film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Jeremy Allen White's Springsteen strikes up a tender romance with a New Jersey waitress and single mother named Faye, played by Australian actress Odessa Young. Their relationship is a fictional one; however, it is unknown whether the character of Faye is a composite of real people from Springsteen's past.
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Is Jon Landau from Deliver Me from Nowhere a real person?
Jeremy Strong as Bruce Springsteen's manager Jon Landau in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere20th Century Studios
Yes, Jon Landau — Springsteen's longtime manager and close confidant, played by Jeremy Strong in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere — is a real person. Landau was a renowned record producer and music manager who, along with his work with Springsteen, also worked with artists including Jackson Browne, Natalie Merchant, MC5, Train and Shania Twain, among others. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 for his musical contributions.
Back when he was a music critic before his production career, Landau famously declared in a 1974 article in The Real Paper: "I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen!" That proclamation helped kickstart Springsteen's career and Landau later went on to co-produce the musician's studio albums from 1975's Born to Run to 1992's Human Torch and Lucky Town.
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Bruce famously recorded the acoustic album Nebraska by himself using a TEAC 144 four-track cassette recorder in his New Jersey bedroom, with the tracks initially meant to serve as demos for the E Street Band. Deliver Me From Nowhere shows the musician wrestling with wanting to preserve the stripped-down nature of the songs amid his label's urging for more upbeat, stadium-filling tunes.
Earlier this year, Springsteen confirmed to Rolling Stone long-held rumors that electric, full-band versions of Nebraska songs exist. However, "It does not have the full album of songs," he explained. It is unclear which songs were given the electric treatment or if Springsteen and Co. will release them at any point in the future.
Related: Bruce Springsteen Had Second Thoughts Before Releasing Born to Run Album
Was Bruce Springsteen's label going to drop him because of Nebraska?
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere20th Century Studios
No. Though Deliver Me From Nowhere shows Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau dealing with pushback from the record label over the somber, acoustic nature of Nebraska, in real life, Columbia Records was reportedly very supportive of the project, with execs viewing the album as a great artistic achievement.
However, there were concerns about being dropped from the label much earlier in Springsteen's career, because his first two albums — though critically acclaimed — had poor record sales, per NPR. Thankfully, that all changed with the release of Springsteen's breakthrough 1975 album Born to Run.
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Does Jeremy Allen White actually sing in the Bruce Springsteen movie?
Yes, along with a physical transformation to portray the music legend (including donning contacts to trade his own famous baby blues for Bruce's soulful brown eyes), Deliver Me from Nowhere star Jeremy Allen White underwent significant vocal and musical training to believably portray Springsteen onscreen.
"I had not had a lot of experience, or any experience, singing or playing guitar, so that was daunting to say the least in the beginning," White told co-star Marc Maron on the latter's WTF podcast.
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere20th Century Studios
White worked with vocal coach Eric Vetro to prep for the role, which saw him crooning iconic tracks like "Born in the U.S.A.," "Born to Run" and "Nebraska." “He just threw himself into playing Bruce Springsteen,” Vetro told PEOPLE. “It takes a lot of oomph and energy, because Bruce doesn’t phone it in. He’s like full out, if I can say, balls-to-the-wall singing. It’s that full-out belting of those songs, and Jeremy just flung himself into it.”
Did White's musical abilities impress the Boss himself? “We recorded at RCA, where Elvis recorded the Sun Records, which is a big inspiration for Bruce with Nebraska, and I recorded it, and that's when I started feeling closest to Bruce,” White told Entertainment Tonight in September. “This is about three months before we started shooting, and then Bruce listened. And Bruce said … ‘It sounds great. You sound like me, but not just like me. You made this song your own, and that's how I want you to make this film.’ So very early on, I had his permission to make the man my own and make the story my own, which meant a lot.”
Related:Bruce Springsteen Shares Real Thoughts About Jeremy Allen White’s Portrayal of Him in Biopic
Did Bruce Springsteen approve Deliver Me from Nowhere?
Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen attend the Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Headline Gala at the 69th BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 15, 2025.Photo by Samir Hussein on Getty Images
Yes, Bruce Springsteen has been publicly supportive of the biopic and was closely involved in the making of the film, offering guidance to director Scott Cooper as well as lead actor Jeremy Allen White. He spent a good amount of time on set with the team during filming, but also has said that he wanted to give the cast and crew space to make their own art.
“If there was a scene coming up that was sometimes really deeply personal, I wanted the actors to feel completely free, and I didn’t want to get in the way, and so I would just stay at home,” he told Rolling Stone.
He praised White and Strong's performances as "terrific," as well as the other actors' work, gushing, "Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he’s out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous."
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