Sam Taylor-Johnson didn't want to make an objective Amy film

Actor Jack O’Connell defends his sympathetic portrayal of the late, legendary singer's former husband Blake Fielder-Civil in the much-discussed new biopic no one would want to be held to account for what they did in their twenties, he tells Hamish MacBain

- Hamish MacBain

SITTING opposite me on a sofa in the Corinthia hotel, dressed all in off-white, Jack  O'Connell half-smiles, does that exhaling thing people do when they're deeply contemplating something and then - in response to my very first question- says: "All right, well... this one's loaded."

I have always really, really liked Jack O'Connell. Who hasn't? As a teen he was - by miles the best thing in Skins, with much more of a natural edge than any of the other breakouts; reflective of a sometimes tough working-class upbringing in Alvaston, Derbyshire. He has been incredible in 2013's Starred Up and the following year's '71 and plenty of other things since.

But more than that he just seems - has always seemed like a decent, humble sort of a guy. When, for example, he later tells me that he's just made his directorial debut with a music video for Paul Weller, he is fizzing with the kind of obvious excitement you cannot help but find endearing.

I thus wish that I didn't have such problems with Back to Black - directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, and in which O'Connell of course co-stars opposite Marisa Abela's Amy Winehouse as Blake Fielder Fielder-Civil, now known as Blake and problems, in particular, with what an easy ride it gives the latter.

It lets him off the hook for introducing Winehouse to class A drugs, despite the fact that he is on record accepting responsibility for this. It credits him, via scenes that feature O'Connell dancing around the Good Mixer pub in Camden, with introducing Winehouse to the music that directly inspired her biggest and most enduring songs (Mark Ronson, by the way, is only mentioned in passing and not featured in the film).