Whatever happened to Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil?
Amy Winehouse’s soulmate. The troubled ex-husband who inspired the singer’s Grammy Award-winning album Back to Black and divorced her to “set her free”. A “junkie” and “hopeless heroin addict” who admitted introducing her to the drug and remains — in the eyes of many fans — the individual responsible for her untimely death from alcohol poisoning at the age of just 27.
These are just some of the ways Blake Fielder-Civil has been described. Winehouse first met the tall, charming, tattooed production assistant in a pub in 2005, married him in a spontaneous wedding in Miami, and later they divorced after a tempestuous and often violent six-year on-off relationship. Now their relationship is central to a star-studded new biopic, Back To Black, directed by Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson, and starring Industry’s Marisa Abela, out in cinemas this Friday.
Former Bafta rising star Jack O’Connell, 32, who starred alongside Emma Corrin in Netflix’s recent adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, plays Fielder-Civil. He gave an interview ahead of the film’s release this week, saying he spent an afternoon with Fielder-Civil in preparation for the role and that “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”.
O’Connell also said the singer’s dad, Mitch Winehouse, “wanted to deck [him]” during visits to the set, when he saw him dressed in Fielder’s trademark hat, chains, and rings.
Unlike previous on-screen depictions of Winehouse’s life, which her father Mitch says have cast him as “the villain”, the new film is being made with the blessing of Winehouse’s family — fuelling speculation that Fielder-Civil, 41, now known by the shortened surname Fielder, will be made the villain of this particular show.
“I don’t think I ruined her, no... I find it disrespectful to imply I was some Machiavellian puppet master,” the recovering drug addict and self-described actor Fielder said four years after
