Amy Winehouse Granted Divorce From Blake Fielder-Civil
Singer's headline-making marriage ends after two years.
After a tumultuous union filled with arrests, public spats and accusations of drug abuse, the turbulent marriage of British singer Amy Winehouse and onetime muse Blake Fielder-Civil ended on Thursday (July 16). The Associated Press reported that neither Winehouse, 25, nor Fielder-Civil, 27, were present when a judge granted the divorce petition at a brief Family Court hearing. The divorce becomes final after six weeks and a day, ending a marriage that provided dozens of international headlines and, according to sources close to Winehouse, nearly helped to write the epitaph for the troubled singer.
The couple, who met in a London bar in 2005, were married in a simple ceremony in front of a few friends in Miami in 2007 but spent much of their wedded life apart, as Fielder-Civil was arrested six months later on an assault charge and sent to jail.
Winehouse's father, Mitch Winehouse, has frequently accused music video production assistant Fielder-Civil for introducing his daughter to hard drugs, and the couple's up-and-down relationship made for plenty of tabloid headlines. Winehouse mined her misery over Fielder-Civil's early abandonment of their relationship for material on her multi-Grammy-winning breakthrough Back to Black, crying in her beer on songs including the album's title track. In interviews, Winehouse frequently spoke of her breathless love for her often disheveled Blake, and the couple appeared inseparable during the international promotional blitz for Black that made Winehouse a household name.
In addition to the reported drug use, Winehouse was famously caught on video carving the words "I Love Blake" into her stomach with a shard of glass, and during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, she displayed photos of the couple passing pills to each other with their tongues.
But the Sid-and-Nancy-style love affair was also accompanied by photos of heated arguments that ended with both sporting bruises and scratches, as well as an arrest in Norway in October 2007 for marijuana possession; the couple were released with a fine. Just months after the wedding, Fielder-Civil was arrested on charges of suspicion of attacking a bar landlord and attempting to bribe him to drop the allegation. Following his incarceration, Winehouse was frequently seen wandering the streets of her Camden neighborhood in a daze, and she subsequently canceled a U.S. tour.
Fielder-Civil was released from prison in February and shortly after filed for divorce on claims of Winehouse's infidelity; she acknowledged adultery and said she would not contest the divorce. The AP reported that the divorce papers filed with the court stated that he found living with Winehouse "intolerable."
Winehouse recently returned to England after several months of living on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where she was reported to be working on the long-awaited follow-up to Back to Black.