The actor on playing Amy Winehouse’s dad, leaving school at 15, and why he loves going back to London’s East End
Eddie Marsan, 55, is an actor it is impossible not to like – although he has taken care in his versatile career (he has been in more than 70 films and counting) not always to be typecast as the twinkling, approachable East Ender you meet in person. He is one of our top character actors, with roles including the irresistibly bonkers driving instructor in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky and a seven-year stint as Terry in Ray Donovan. Next month he stars as John Adams, opposite Michael Douglas, in the new Apple TV+ series Franklin, about Benjamin Franklin’s mission in France to secure American independence, and Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s dad, in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new film Back to Black.
What sort of a man is Mitch? He came out pretty badly from the documentary Amy (2015).
He is a father and that’s how I played him. A friend of mine worked with Amy in the music industry and knew him. I said to him: what do you think about Mitch? He said: I liked the man. He saw him as a loving father who had a daughter who was an addict and who was at the same time the most famous woman in the world. He was just a cab driver trying to do his best, trying to deal with it. I’d never have done this film if it sanitised – or demonised – Mitch. It’s not even the way I approach life. Life is more complex than that.
