Pete Doherty has spoken to NME about his appreciation for Back To Black, director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2024 biopic on the life and death of Amy Winehouse – a film that Doherty feels was unfairly treated by critics at the time.
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Industry’s Marisa Abela played the legendary singer, alongside Sinners’ Jack O’Connell as Winehouse’s notorious ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil. Though Abela received some praise for her performance, the film was widely panned and holds a 35 per cent ‘rotten’ rating on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
“I personally enjoyed it,” said Doherty at the Luxembourg City Film Festival in March, where he was serving for the first time as a member of the International Jury. “I thought she captured it all. I mean, Amy had a very distinctive way of moving, of talking, almost impossible to recreate. I thought [Abela] did it really well, but also it’s the little things, the music that she was playing in her flat, the music that was on the jukebox when they’re in the pub, the characters in the pub. It was just spot on with all these little details.”
“I thought the people that panned it, because it got a proper critical hammering, I thought it was a bit unfair, to be honest,” the singer-songwriter continued. ”It’s a cruel, merciless world out there with the film critics.”
The Libertines live at Glastonbury 2025. Credit: Andy Ford for NME
Most importantly, Doherty said he thought Back To Black’s subject would’ve approved. “I think Amy would have liked it,” he said. “It was basically a love story, wasn’t it? It wasn’t so much about her dad, and everyone goes on and on about her dad. It was about her and Blake and when they fell in love. I thought they captured the ‘them against the world’ bit well. I thought the voice was her voice.”
Doherty also spoke warmly of his relationship with cinema, from the fun of hearing his tunes in films like Steve Jobs and Children Of Men to the many works of kitchen sink social realism that have inspired his songwriting over the years. “Yeah, there’s been lots of borrowing,” Doherty went on. “The song ‘Lust Of The Libertines’, that’s got [1960s New Wave films] Kind Of Loving, Poor Cow and Family Way in it. That’s three films in one chorus. It [came out of my] interest with that era, or just England, or just Britain, that borders on obsession.”
The Libertines and Babyshambles frontman has made his own attempts at acting, including starring opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg in Sylvie Verheyde’s stylish 2012 romance Confession Of A Child Of The Century. However, after admitting to mistaking the two-time Palme d’Or-winning director Michael Haneke for a Jewish holiday during one of the festival’s jury deliberations, Doherty conceded that his viewing habits rarely leave the artform’s earliest decades.
“I don’t tend to watch a lot of modern films. It’s a bit blind really, because there’s so much talent out there. My missus [filmmaker Katia De Vidas] loves to go to the cinema, films are her life, but I just sort of watch the same over and over again. Sunset Boulevard and Casablanca. The Maltese Falcon. It’s like an opiated sort of thing, like a comfort blanket. The first I ever watched as a kid were the Marx Brothers films. My dad used to love them. I still don’t think there’s a film universe that I’d rather be in than the Marx Brothers’,” Doherty remembered, before rummaging in his pocket for a fake moustache and launching into a decent Groucho impersonation. “It’s pure punk rock,” he concluded, “pure anarchy.”
Since the festival wrapped up in March, the singer has been playing solo shows across Europe as he gears up for a series of festival dates with The Libertines over the summer. Last week, Babyshambles announce a huge Margate show as their only UK gig of 2026.
“A Beano is guaranteed for all. Kiss me quick – sun, sea, sand on a Bank Holiday Weekend …does it get any better? …no,” said Doherty in a statement.
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