Marisa Abela studied Amy Winehouse as an artist in order to portray her accurately in 'Back to Black'.
The 27-year-old actress portrays the tragic star in Sam Taylor-Johnson's biopic and Iain Cooke, the film’s music supervisor, was hugely impressed with Marisa's dedication and vocal abilities.
He told Billboard: "She honestly was phenomenal. I’ve got nothing but praise and admiration for her because she works so hard. She was a complete joy to work with and really positive and she just immersed herself in it. She had phenomenal pitch and timing and she just really studied Amy as an artist and also studied some of her influences. She was great."
Amy died in 2011 at age 27 from alcohol poisoning after years of battling drug and alcohol addiction and Iain revealed he approached her old band as he wanted the movie to be as authentic as possible.
He said: "One of the things that we did was we approached her old live band early on — and we would have completely understood if they didn’t want to be involved — but we approached them to see whether they would like to come in and pre-record the live backing tracks and they did. It was just incredibly special and incredibly moving. It was her real band that played that those gigs who pre-recorded the music, and you can’t get more authentic than that.
"There’s a moment very early on in the film that Marisa sings ‘What Is It About Men’ — she’s just in her bedroom and it’s just a one-shot with nothing to hide behind. We knew that if we got that moment right, that the audience would be really in the film with us and in the journey. Marisa just did incredible.
"Amy was one of the most important recording artists of all time, and she’ll stand up in history alongside the greats that influenced her. She had lyrical wit and one of the greatest recording voices and most distinctive recording voices on record. I hope that we’ll go back and listen to her again, and rediscover and keep listening to her because she’s a classic forevermore."
