Jimi Hendrix’s former girlfriend is still upset by how she is portrayed in “All Is By My Side,” the movie John Ridley wrote and directed before he won an Oscar for adapting “12 Years a Slave.”
Kathy Etchingham saw the movie again last week at the Melbourne Film Festival and told a friend, “There is no doubt it is defamatory, but there is nothing I can do about it.”
Etchingham, who met the guitar genius in London before he became famous, noticed that some edits had been made, including a scene showing Hayley Atwell, who plays her, swigging a drink as soon as she wakes up.
Etchingham says the movie still portrays her “as a lowlife groupie [who] attacks Jimi in the street and knocks him to the ground. Later, he attacks her and she is prescribed sleeping pills and painkillers.”
Etchingham said Hendrix was gentle and fun and never violent. The movie will be released on Sept. 26.
The film’s representatives did not reply to a request for comment by press time.