Amy Winehouse's mum on tender final moments with daughter and how she found out about 'devastating' death
Thousands will flock to the cinema today to watch the new Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black, as it hits screens for the first time.
The film portrays the life of the iconic but troubled artist, who rose to fame with her incredible songs such as Rehab and Valerie, before tragically dying from alcohol poisoning in 2011, aged just 27.
Despite her immense talent, Amy battled demons her entire life, including struggles with addiction and bulimia, which she faced throughout her music career.
Actress Marisa Abela, 27, has been transformed into Amy, donning her signature black beehive hairdo, thick eyeliner, and tattoos, while Jack O'Connell plays her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil.
On the day of the film's release, we take a look back at when we previously sat down with Amy's mother, Janis Winehouse, on the 10th anniversary of Amy's passing.
In our exclusive 2021 interview, Janis bravely shared the heart-wrenching moment she learned of her daughter's death and reminisced in great detail about their life together.
Janis recalled: "On the day Amy died, the phone rang and my husband Richard took the call downstairs.
"His mum was seriously ill at the time so when he came into the room and said 'She's gone', I thought he was talking about his mum. But then he repeated, 'Your baby's gone'. I was numb. It felt matter-of-fact, like being told 'Amy's crossed the road'.
"The hours that followed felt like a blur. We were immediately sent a family liaison officer, who turned up really quickly, and then suddenly family were arriving.
"Amy's dad Mitch flew back from New York and the following day he came straight here from the airport. We stood in the living room and hugged and cried, but the hard, cold reality of what had happened only really hit when I went to the coroner's office to identify the body.
"Amy looked like she was asleep in her bed. I wanted to say, 'Amy, get up, you've got to get up, it's time to go to school'. She looked so normal and peaceful."
The singer's mum continued: "If I could describe being Amy's mum in one word it would be 'interesting'. She says it herself in her lyrics - 'I was a flame'
"My Amy was a firecracker. As a little girl, it was as though she was mishearing me, because whenever I said 'don't' she seemed to think I meant 'do'. She was feisty, she always spoke her mind and she always did what she wanted. She sang constantly - morning, noon and night - and both me and her brother were always telling her to shut up."
Janis Winehouse also opened up about her unique relationship with her late daughter, revealing: "I was probably a bit of a pushover but I was a good mother. I was the mother I didn't have and would have liked.
"My mum was very self-involved and uninterested in what I was doing; she always acted like I was disturbing her. I wanted to make sure when I became a mother that I was there for my kids.
"And that's what gave me and Amy such a close bond - she could always talk to me.
"As a pharmacist I was also her and her friends' medical adviser a lot of the time. She'd come to me and say 'my friend so-and-so wants to go on the Pill, what should she take?'"
Reflecting on Amy's younger years, Janis shared: "Amy always had an addictive personality but it's only with hindsight that I can see that. Looking back, she seemed like a normal teenager doing what normal teenagers do. And of course 99% of what normal teenagers do is done behind their parents' backs.
"With me and in front of family she was always so sweet and constantly apologising. She was protective of me. She pushed the boundaries but then if she swore in front of me she'd say 'I'm sorry, mummy, I'm sorry'.
"Even when her career took off, she stayed the same Amy. She may have spread her wings and flown the nest but whenever she came home she was the same person - affectionate, funny, loving. Even when her personal life became chaotic, she was always clean when she came home.
"She wouldn't even smoke in front of me. Having spoken to her friends since she died I've realised she compartmentalised her life; she kept different groups of friends separate, and never let them overlap. I think when she came home she wanted normality. It was her way of creating a safe space for herself, away from the noise of her fame.
"Amy was so bright and she always needed to be stimulated, which is why she found school boring. She loved English because she was so good with words but ultimately she liked singing more than maths or biology or anything like that.
"I remember her playing Rizzo in a school performance of Greece, despite auditioning for the role of Sandy. Years later I found the casting sheet in her room and she'd written 'b****' next to the girl who got Sandy, which made me laugh.
"One day she came home with her report cards and she'd attached a cover letter to them in which she told me how I should approach the comments. She'd explained each of the teachers as if to temper my reaction - we were roaring with laughter.
"Amy was an excellent songwriter because she wrote honestly and openly about her feelings and when people heard her music they connected with that.
"After she died we found her journals and diaries and she put so much down - all her plans and goals and dreams. Her journals are full of poetry, or songs, I suppose, that have never seen the light of day."
Janis recalled the moment she realised her daughter had found fame, after spotting Amy's face on a giant billboard in London.
"It really hit me that Amy's career had taken off when I was driving along one day and I saw her album advertised on a giant billboard in Palmers Green. That was an amazing moment.
"But she never let the fame go to her head. After she won the Ivor Novello [n 2008, for Best Contemporary song for Rehab] she put it in her handbag and brought it over to my house on the Tube. It was weighing her shoulder down. She turned up saying 'This thing is so heavy, mum, can we keep it here?," she said.
But despite reaching immense levels of notoriety quickly, Janis shared that Amy still had a shy side.
She said: "She didn't like having awards in her house and never listened to her own music. Nobody was allowed to listen to her songs in her house, including friends and security guards. I think once the song was out there it was work, for her. She loved to song-write and sing but she didn't feel like a celebrity."
Despite Amy struggling with addiction issues for years, her family never gave up hope that she was getting on the right track.
Janis adds: " In the last few years of Amy's life, there were periods of time when she was doing really well but I was always aware that the addiction was still there. I was hopeful but it wasn't resolved in my mind.
"The day before she died I met up with her at her house and although she had been drinking, she wasn't drunk. We sat and looked over old photos. I remember her looking at a picture of her brother Alex and saying 'Oh, he was such a beautiful baby', and he was, but she never saw herself in that way.
"The whole time we were looking through the photos we were wrapped around each other. Amy had her arms around me and she kept kissing me on the cheek and saying 'I love you, mummy'. It's actually my favourite and most treasured memory of Amy because there was a closeness between us.
"I couldn't have known it would be the last time I'd see her alive but I'm always grateful we had that day and that the last thing she said to me was 'I love you, mummy'.
"In the weeks that followed her death, so many people showed up at the house. At one point, Mark Ronson and Kelly Osbourne were in our back garden, chatting about Amy and mingling with other friends and family members.
"It's one of those strange times that I can look back on and feel almost dispassionate about. Suddenly my house didn't belong to me anymore. It was like I had to put on a performance, even at the funeral, which felt surreal.
"It was during Shiva [a mourning period in Judaism] so it was expected, and it was so interesting to see all of Amy's friends come together, that's what happens when there is a tragedy, but I was still in a state of shock.
"We got hundreds of hundreds of letters of sympathy and we still do. We get letters from people asking for personal objects of Amy's, which I don't like. People ask for one of her dresses or something and I ignore it.
"I keep a lot of my sadness tucked up away inside of me because then I can concentrate on the positives, which is something I've always done. And one thing I want people to know is that no one could have done anything differently."
Janis also hit out at vile trolls, who placed blame on her family – including her dad, Mitch – for her death.
She said: "Amy had so much support and so many interventions; there were so many people supervising her.
"But she chose her own path. We have suffered from the trolls and the damaging speculation - accusations that Mitch just wants to make money off of his daughter, that we killed her, that we could have done more. It's completely wrong.
"The same thing happened after Caroline Flack died - everyone was looking for someone to blame. But addiction is a mental illness and that is the true villain in this story.
"I've studied addiction and I understand that now. When Amy died everyone who knew her, or felt like they knew her, wanted somewhere to put their grief and anger. Mitch took the brunt of it and it's unfair.
"There's a misconception that Amy's home life was fractured because her parents divorced but we were not a family divided. Even after I separated from Mitch, we remained a unit.
I've always prided myself on being an excellent ex-wife. We've worked on the Amy Winehouse Foundation since Amy died and achieved some incredible things, helping people in dire situations and trying to get some positives out of what happened.
"One thing that is really frustrating is that people still think of Amy as a drug addict because of the sheer volume of images that came out of her during that period of her life.
"But Amy was probably on Class A drugs for a year and half, which is an incredibly small proportion of her life and does not define who she was. I watched the first 45 minutes of the Amy documentary on Netflix, just the bits where there were home videos of her as a child, and then I switched it off. That whole part of her life has been amplified but it's time to correct the balance.
"Amy was a vulnerable person but she wasn't weak. She got herself off the drugs, she was savvy and she made her own decisions.
"Mitch is blamed for her going on her last tour but she made that decision. She was a grown, wealthy woman - married, for some of it.
"She wasn't a kid and no one could force her to do anything. In fact, her wealth actually made it harder because she didn't have that rock bottom moment in the same way perhaps other addicts have. She didn't end up destitute. She always had a roof over her head and food in the fridge.
"I suffered watching Amy's illness being played out in public. My MS [multiple sclerosis] meant it was getting harder for me to physically be there for her. I couldn't literally sweep in and put my wings around her. But then, I don't think that would have helped. You are helpless when someone is in the throes of addiction. I was an observer."
Concluding on Amy's legacy she said: "I want Amy to be remembered as the sweet and talented girl she was.
"Even when she came home looking like Endora from Bewitched with the big hair and the eye flicks, she was still my Amy. She was always my Amy and she always will be."
Back To Black, a movie chronicling Amy's life from adolescence to adulthood, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, is in cinemas from Friday, 12 April
