AS posh and seductive investment banker Yasmin in sex-fuelled BBC drama Industry, Marisa Abela had viewers glued to the screen.
Now she is swapping wild romps for wild times as she takes on the role of troubled singer Amy Winehouse in big screen biopic Back To Black.
Directed by Fifty Shades Of Grey’s Sam Taylor-Johnson, it began filming this week, with Marisa spotted sporting the late singer’s signature beehive hairdo.
And despite different starts in life, the 26-year-old actress may have more in common with the singer — who died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at the age of 27 — than first meets the eye.
While Amy grew up in North London with dad Mitch, a taxi driver, and mum Janis, a pharmacist, Marisa was raised in the quaint village of Rottingdean, near Brighton.
She won a scholarship to the exclusive all-girls independent Roedean School.
‘It scared me a bit’
But Marisa, who in the film wears a silver stud above her left lip and thick-winged eyeliner, found it hard to fit in with her posh peers.
After first trying to blend in with a faux upper-class accent and Jack Wills clothing, she told Soho House website how she then rebelled.
She said: “I was either trying to be like them or extremely not like them. I was like, if you can’t beat them, join them. And if you can’t join them, f*** ’em.”
“I went the complete opposite way. Like, ‘ello!’. I didn’t brush my hair. I’d spend Fridays and Saturdays with girls from the local area, drinking a two-litre bottle of Strongbow in the park. My poor mum.”
Amy, who had a well-publicised battle with alcohol, once told how she began drinking at the age of 12.
She also said in a recording shared exclusively with The Sun in 2021: “I drink every day but not usually Jack Daniel’s. I’ve been drinking Jack Daniel’s for eight years or something.
“Everyone knows. It’s like Jack and Coke. It’s like when you’re younger and you want to get that little bit drunker than everyone else, you drink whisky. You know what it’s like as a kid.”
Marisa was set on becoming a human rights lawyer after finishing school and accepted a place at University College London to study history.
But with her mum, actress Caroline Gruber, and dad Angelo Abela, a movie director and producer, she was always destined to tread the boards. And she soon changed her mind about the law.
As she told one online magazine: “I think I rebelled against it because I could see it took a lot of gumption . . . and it scared me quite a bit.”
Having starred on stage at school as Juliet in Romeo And Juliet, Marisa went on to graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which counts Ralph Fiennes and Phoebe Waller-Bridge among its former students.
Like Amy, she also has Jewish heritage. The singer’s parents, who split when she was ten, were keen on Amy understanding her roots and enrolled her at a religious Sunday school.
But she was reluctant to go and said in an interview: “Every week I’d say, ‘I don’t want to go, Dad, please don’t make me go’. I never learnt anything about being Jewish when I went anyway.”
Amy’s career took off after she signed to Simon Fuller’s 19 Management in 2002 and she found international success in 2006 with her second album, Back To Black.
And while her music and distinctive voice became the soundtrack of the Noughties, Amy became synonymous with wild parties, drink and drugs.
Her battle with alcohol addiction grew worse after meeting Blake Fielder-Civil in a London pub in 2005. Blake, 40, who Amy went on to marry in 2007, is said to have introduced her to hard drugs, including heroin.
Amy’s first manager, Nick Godwyn, told The Times in 2007: “Amy changed overnight after she met Blake.
“She just sounded completely different. Her personality became more distant. And it seemed to me like that was down to the drugs.
“When I met her she smoked weed but she thought the people who took class A drugs were stupid. She used to laugh at them.”
After footage came out of Amy smoking crack, she entered rehab in January 2008.
Her father spoke about her reluctance to undergo treatment at the time, saying: “Part of the problem is she doesn’t think she’s got a problem.
‘I constantly sing at home’
“She thinks she can do what she does recreationally and get on with the rest of her life.”
Marisa was nine when Amy released Back To Black, which featured hit song Rehab and scooped Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2008 Grammy Awards.
Asked if she was inspired by Amy, Marisa told Soho House online: “Definitely. I was really the perfect age. I grew up hearing her music.
“I was very young when the songs came out, so I don’t think I realised then how much of an amazing poet she was.”
While Marisa has not sung in any of her previous work, which also includes Sky One’s COBRA, she is believed to have an alto vocal range like Amy.
She recently told website The Cut: “I’m quite shy but I sing constantly at home.
“I live above a florist, who overheard me singing, and she gave me a big round of applause and a bunch of flowers as if I were an opera star.”
Marisa confirmed the news of the role, which had been linked with Lady Gaga, with an Instagram post last week in which she proudly wore a gold necklace with the words “Amy Jade” — the singer’s first two names.
She captioned the shot: “And for London. This is for London, Cause Camden Town Ain’t burnin’ down.”
The quote was a reference from Amy’s 2008 Grammy acceptance speech after winning Record of the Year thanks to her hit Rehab.