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Jack O’Connell has insisted Back to Black is a “celebration” of Amy Winehouse.
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The 33-year-old star plays the late singer’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil in director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s upcoming biopic and while the project has faced criticism for being “tasteless” and coming just 13 years after the Rehab hitmaker’s death at the age of 27, the actor thinks the backlash is unfair.
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He told Sunday Times Culture magazine: “What is the acceptable timescale of that? Put it like this: if we were trying to portray her in any form of negative light, then that might be a valid point and I can understand one or two people pre-empting that.
“But if you talk to Sam (Taylor-Johnson, the director) we’re not even calling this a biopic, it’s a celebration. I can get with that.”
The movie was made with the blessing of Amy’s father Mitch, who occasionally visited the set – and when he did, old emotions rose to the surface when he saw Jack.
The actor admitted: “I think he wanted to deck me when he saw me dressed as Blake.”
The former Skins actor also got to spend time with Blake – who was married to Amy from 2007 to 2009 – and found him to be very “genuine.”
He said: “I spent an afternoon with him. He was quite open. He spoke so highly of Amy. There was something so genuine in how he spoke, it was unquestionable to me that he loved her. That informed how I wanted to portray him.”
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But Jack admitted Blake – who has previously admitted to introducing Amy to heroin – wasn’t “overly keen” on the idea of the biopic.
He said: “He wasn’t overly keen, cause obviously it’s going into a phase of his life that is very personal and he harbours a mixed bag of emotions.
“But a part of my analysis is that we’re talking about (being in your) mid-20s. God knows what we were getting up to in our mid-20s. You wouldn’t want to be doing that under a microscope and still be held accountable for it today.
“And to understand that relationship, the fame that was a by-product of her success, all the negativity that came with that … We’re all fallible. And drugs were rife then. Heavy drugs were so heavily done and glamorized.”
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