'It was very helpful': Marisa Abela praises female involvement on Back to Black

Marisa Abela felt it was essential for women to have the main roles behind the camera on 'Back to Black'.

The 27-year-old star plays the tragic singer Amy Winehouse in Sam Taylor-Johnson's biopic and thinks that the female involvement was important for the sake of a balanced depiction of the 'Love Is a Losing Game' artist.

Marisa told IndieWire: "I think that it was very helpful that almost every single head of department on our film is a woman. You have a female director, a female DoP, female costume, female hair and makeup, female set designers.

"It was crazy. And what that meant was I didn't feel protective over Amy and (have to deal with) having a male director say to me, 'She's just fawning over (Blake Fielder-Civil, her ex-husband)."

She continued: "I feel I would have to protect Amy from his view of her. But it was just a room full of women. There was so much protection around Amy as a woman in the space.

"You felt that you could play the reality of that scene rather than trying to modernise it to save her legacy. You just played it for what it was."

Marisa hailed Taylor-Johnson for giving her the chance to delve into the task of becoming Winehouse on the big screen.

She said: "The thing that was most important to me was this indescribable intensity and power and magic that (Amy) had. And if I could get somewhere close to what that was and what that felt like and where that came from, then that would be a film that was worth making about someone that we already know really well.

"And it just so happened that Sam felt the same way, that that was the most important thing about telling the story."