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In her short life, Amy Winehouse became a music legend, but her troubled personal life was often under intense scrutiny in the press.
Her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil was tabloid fodder and she was pursued by photographers when she was at her most vulnerable.
The director of a new film about Winehouse says “paparazzi and addiction” are the villains in the movie, not her ex-husband.
Sam Taylor-Johnson tells the BBC it “wasn’t her place to cast judgement”.
The film, Back to Black, follows Winehouse’s journey from a confident north London teenager to international megastar.
Marisa Abela, who appeared in Barbie and BBC drama Industry, plays Winehouse. Skins and This Is England actor Jack O’Connell takes on the role of Fielder-Civil.
Taylor-Johnson, who also directed the 2009 John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, says she wanted to meet Fielder-Civil before filming but was not able to.
“We had to understand why Amy fell in love with him, so it wasn’t about making a one-dimensional villain,” she says. “We had to fall in love with him to understand why she wrote one of the greatest albums about their love.
“In terms of Blake, it wasn’t my place to cast judgement on somebody who was obviously an addict, and [on] the two of them having this intense, albeit toxic, love affair.”
Taylor-Johnson and Abela may not have met Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband, but they did meet other members of the singer’s family.
The director visited Winehouse’s parents before production began “out of respect” because she was making a film about their daughter.
But she says they were not involved in the making of Back to Black, and could not say “what I could and could not do”.
However, the family did later visit the set and met Abela while she was dressed as Amy. The actress says: “It was incredibly important for me to be respectful and be aware of the sensitivity of that moment.”
A film biopic about Winehouse has not been universally popular, with some saying it is too soon after the singer’s death from alcohol poisoning in 2011. She was just 27 years old.
After the Back to Black trailer was released, some social media users complained that Abela does not look or sound enough like the late singer.
Abela sings in the film but says “it was a relief” that it was not a prerequisite for taking on the role, saying she was “in awe” of Winehouse.
The actress had singing lessons before filming. “What was important for me was that music was the medium which Amy wanted to tell her story, and if you sing in any way that resembles Amy’s style of singing, then you can tell each story as she would have wanted to tell it.
