‘Back to Black’ Star Jack O’Connell on Playing Amy Winehouse’s Ex-Husband Blake Fielder-Civil: ‘I Understood the Type of Geezer That He Is’

variety.com:

Alex Ritman In “Back to Black,” Jack O’Connell’s Blake Fielder-Civil swaggers into the life of Amy Winehouse — played by an exceptional Marisa Abela — with seductive bravado, sweeping the singer off her feet on their first meeting in a London pub thanks to, among other things, a lip-synced rendition of the Shangri-La’s “Leader of the Pack”.

As the divisive biopic, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and released in the U.K. by StudioCanal this Friday (and in the U.S. by Focus Features on May 17), agonizingly portrays, the smitten pair quickly descend into violent self-destruction — a “toxic co-dependency” as Fielder-Civil later describes it in the film — fueled by alcoholism and drug abuse.

Many may question the ethics of picking at a tragic story that was heavily chronicled and sensationalized by the media in real-time during Winehouse’s final years.

But for anyone who’s been tracking O’Connell’s career, the opportunity to see the hugely talented star saunter confidently back into cinemas with a significant role he can truly get his teeth into is something to be relished. “I guess I can understand why it came my way,” the actor tells Variety of his casting as Winehouse’s estranged husband, soulmate, source of her creative inspiration and object of her addictive obsession.