For fans of late neo-soul singer Amy Winehouse, the biopic “Back to Black” marks a rare chance to see the performer’s bright-but-brief life celebrated on the big screen.
The film also shares details about Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse’s ex-husband who played a central role in some of her highest and lowest moments, and inspired many of her biggest hits.
Winehouse had Fielder-Civil’s name tattooed over her heart, and she waited on him as he served time in prison. She considered him “the male version” of her, according to a 2009 interview in , and thought they were perfect for each other.
However, that same year, the two divorced after two years of marriage marred by addiction and infidelity.
So, what became of the man who said on “” five years ago (in addition to other television appearances) that he introduced the “Rehab” singer to heroin — the man some blame for setting Winehouse on a ?
Read on to find out.
Since her death
Though Fielder-Civil continued to struggle with his own drug addiction following Winehouse’s death, he revealed in April on “” that he’s been “clean for years.”
He’s now the father of two children, whom he shares with another ex, Sarah Aspin — a son, Jack, born in 2011, and a daughter, Lola, born in 2013.
His thoughts about the biopic
Fielder-Civil, now 42, has seen “Back to Black,” and in his April interview with ITV’s “GMB,” he opened up about what it was like to watch it.
“There were some difficult parts to process, but the upside of that is it was almost therapeutic in a way,” he explained. “There were some parts of it that enabled me to feel like I was seeing a more accurate representation of the relationship — not in a sense of being let off the hook or whitewashed … just in a sense that it wasn’t all about addiction. … There was addiction, but it was only an aspect.”
Still, he admitted that it was an aspect he would change if he had the chance to do it over again.
“If I would have known how it was going to develop, I would have been far more careful about the things I was doing, the people I was doing it with,” he said. “I had no one looking out for me, either.”
What his big-screen counterpart says of him
In that same interview, Fielder-Civil noted that some still see him as a villain.
“I’ve had death threats online, social media,” he said. “Amy inspires a lot of fierce fandom devotion.”
But the man who plays Fielder-Civil in “Back to Black,” Jack O’Connell, refused to jump to any conclusions.
“All I can say is I don’t agree that you can possibly know someone just based on what’s in the media or the press,” the “Little Fish” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” star told in an interview published last month. “You can’t get the measure of a man without meeting him. So I met him.”
He characterized their meeting as “two lads hanging out one Saturday afternoon,” and added that he felt he had “a lot in common with” Fielder-Civil.
What Fielder-Civil now hopes for
Winehouse’s family, including patriarch Mitch Winehouse, distanced themselves from Fielder-Civil after her death. But since watching “Back to Black,” the singer’s ex said he wants to bridge that distance.
“I think that one thing that comes in the film is Amy was a peacemaker, and I think that watching the film yesterday, I thought she’d probably want me and Mitch to maybe have some sort of — we don’t need to be best friends, but I wouldn’t mind having a conversation with him,” he said during his April “GMB” appearance.
After all, he added, “Mitch is a father; I’m a father. I understand his position on me. I understand it. I really do. But I hope that he would see that there was genuinely love there. I loved Amy very, very much, and she loved me, too.”
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