Jack O'Connell Covers Man About Town's Spring/Summer 2024 Issue

“It’s funny, on my way to meeting Blake for the first time, before we’d even started filming, I got in the car and “Valerie” came on the radio. There’s been loads of that cosmic type shit like that happening around this film. It’s interesting, I think every role [an actor plays] is difficult in its own way. But particularly for this, it’s difficult when you’re playing someone who exists and people know about. With Back to Black, there’s no ulterior motive in creating this biopic. It’s for Winehouse. There’s no snooping about, no trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s a celebration of her, her music and the subculture that I also identified with, wearing polo shirts, my jeans were skinny, hanging around Camden listening to The Libertines.”

Stepping into the shoes of Amy Winehouse’s partner Blake, Jack O’Connell honours the life of the perennial British musician in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new biopic, Back to Black. The Derbyshire-born actor talks meeting the real-life counterpart to his character, dismantling the antagonistic powers of the press, using music to assimilate into becoming Blake and his unexpected directorial debut coming to screens soon. 

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