'I really am jammy'

INTERVIEW:She might be only 28, but Jodie Whittaker has already had a "brilliant" career, and behind the irrepressible enthusiasm is a woman who is serious about her work, writes DONALD CLARKE

JODIE WHITTAKER says “brilliant” a lot. The actor was raised in Huddersfield and she chews away at the word as only a Yorkshire woman can. It comes out as an explosion of cheery enthusiasm.

What was it like working with Peter O’Toole? “Oh, it was brilliant! I was like this sheepdog following him round in my pink tracksuit. I was like the biggest fan in the world. It was a right laugh.”

Did she enjoy her season – straight out of drama school – acting at the open-air Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank?

“Brilliant! Oh, you couldn’t have a more loving audience.”

Now 28, boasting well-balanced features and a strong, welcoming voice, Whittaker is, it should be clarified, a mature person with a sharp line in self-deprecating humour. For most of our conversation she comes across as a sober type, but, every now and then, the teen within shows herself. Brilliant.

At such moments, she could not seem less like the character she plays in Swansong: The Story of Occi Byrne. Conor McDermottroe's modestly budgeted Irish film, based on the director's one-man theatre show, follows a confused young man's grim adventures in and around Sligo of the 1970s and 1980s. He spends time on a trawler. He gets put away in a mental asylum. All the while, the boy's single mother – dad's identity is a key mystery – becomes steadily more distraught in her bland, decaying house. Whittaker appears older, more haggard and considerably less sparky in the picture. Indeed, she's barely recognisable.

“It was a funny kind of environment to work in,” she ponders. “But the lovely thing about filming away from home is that at night you can go out and have a drink. It was actually a joyous experience. I’d never been to Sligo before and it was such fun.”

You can't get young Jodie Whittaker out of Ireland these days. Just a few months ago, she appeared opposite Cillian Murphy and Jim Broadbent as the female lead in Ian Fitzgibbon's Perrier's Bounty.That film was actually shot after Occi Byrne, but, blessed with a larger budget, managed to beat McDermottroe's film into cinemas.

"I was doing Swansongand, while I was there, I was sent down to Dublin to try out for Perrier and I got it. I finished work on Swansongat three o'clock one day and the next day I started on Perrier's. I was doing them back to back. I'm a jammy little bastard. I even got to do my own accent in Perrier's Bounty. I really am jammy."

Oh yes, the accent. Getting those Sligo vowels right must have been a tricky business. “Well, yeah, because I had no reference points. If I have to do a north London accent then I know people from there. But I was lucky in that all the crew were from that part of Ireland. So they were really helpful.”

Whittaker was raised in a household with no theatrical pretentions, but admits that, as a child, she was a real “show off”. Her family urged her to work hard at whatever she did and, accordingly, reacted with hurrahs – brilliant! – when she decided to try out for drama school. At the turn of the century, she made her way to the prestigious Guildhall School in the City of London. Alma mater of Joseph Fiennes, Daniel Craig and Simon Russell Beale, the college has a very considerable reputation. It’s the type of institution that could intimidate a feeble youth, but our Jodie was made of sterner stuff.

“Drama school isn’t for everybody,” she agrees. “But I got it. I saw people struggle there, but I had an absolutely great time.”

She comes across as a playful sort. I imagine she enjoyed improvisations, experimentation and all that theatrical malarkey. "Oh, I was a real brat as a child," she says. "Yeah, I was always playing pretend. I remember, at 18, travelling for six months with some friends and we acted out the entire storyline of Lost –years before the series. We pretended we'd been in this plane crash and we didn't know where we are. When the series came on we all said: 'We made that up.' I was 18. I could vote. I could help decide who the government was. And I was still playing pretend. That's what I'm like."

As is often the case with (lucky) drama students, Jodie left college early to take up a job. She did a season with Mark Rylance, the distinguished actor and director, at the Globe Theatre and secured a few small roles on the telly. The big break came when she was cast as Jessie, a cheeky, foul-mouthed northerner, in Roger Michell's Venus. Based on a typically salty script by Hanif Kureishi, the 2006 film found her carrying on a sort of disguised, chaste romance with a decaying Peter O'Toole. The film must have been quite an experience for the young actor. Other legends lurking about the set included Leslie Phillips, Richard Griffiths and the mighty Vanessa Redgrave.

“I did the audition and I knew it was between me and two other girls,” she says. “My agent was on holiday and she rang me up. Because she was on holiday I thought she was just phoning for a chat. Then she said: ‘You got it.’ That was so amazing. You can never go back to your first film again. And to be with all those amazing people. I had this scene with Vanessa and she was treating me just like an equal – like I had every right to be there. That was such a thrill.”

What about Phillips and O’Toole? I imagine they formed their own little gang of oldies. “No. They were great. I only had two scenes with Leslie, but he was so charming and so funny. He actually does say ‘Oh, hellooo’ and ‘Ding, dong!’ on cue.”

Married to Christian Contreras, a fellow thespian and Guildhall veteran, Whittaker is steadily securing a reputation as a happy blend of leading actor and character performer. She has the right class of looks to secure romantic roles, but, with her off-kilter sense of humour and tangy northern accent, she should age nicely into less fluffy, more rounded parts. She starred alongside her pal Gemma Arterton in both St Trinian'sand the BBC's adaptation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. She has secured a role in One Day, the next film by Lone Scherfig, director of An Education. And she continues to bellow to the crowds in the West End.

Is there any downside to the business? She genuinely seems to enjoy every twist and turn of the trade. What about the fact that she has to answers questions from old berks such as myself?

“The press has been alright to me,” she says. “But yeah. You go to a dentist and there is a magazine and someone you know is getting ripped to shreds. You do then realise there are other sides to this business. But that helps people see the work. And all you want is for them to see the work. If somebody sees something and hates it then that’s better than them not having any strong feelings about it. The last thing you want them to say is: ‘Oh, were you in that?’”

Nicely put, Jodie. You’re a smart piece of work. Brilliant.

Swansong: The Story of Occi Byrneis on limited release