Northern star Jodie Whittaker

Jodie Whittaker is, she says, the luckiest girl ever to have come out of Huddersfield. The star of the Oscar-nominated 2006 film Venus can barely complete a sentence without proclaiming just how unbelievably fortunate she is to be taking on the title role in Antigone at the National Theatre. ‘Rehearsing at the National is a very privileged position to be in. You’re in a room where you know that rehearsing for something next door is Rory Kinnear or Julie Walters,’ she says in her soft Yorkshire accent.

Jodie, 29, wanted to act from an early age and set her sights on drama school. ‘I’d heard of Guildhall so I wanted to go there. It was absolutely through luck rather than any kind of focus.’ There must have been some focus involved, since she graduated in 2003 with a gold medal. ‘People get gold medals for different things,’ she laughs. ‘I got mine for improvement, which basically meant I was absolutely shit when I got there and maybe just about all right when I left.’

All this self-deprecation makes Jodie enormously likeable, but her success isn’t solely down to luck and she knows it. ‘It’s unhealthy to think that you nail it every time,’ she says about going on stage, ‘as it’s equally unhealthy never to acknowledge that you’ve done something you can be proud of. That’s just being an actor, isn’t it? A fine balance of neuroses.’

It was between classes at Guildhall on Meisner and Brecht that she met her future husband, the Hispanic American actor Christian Contreras, who recently starred in the BBC drama The Syndicate, alongside Timothy Spall and Joanna Page. The pair live in the same Muswell Hill flat that they first moved into while they were studying. ‘I don’t own it, of course. As if!’ she adds. When their filming schedules allow it, they also call Huddersfield and Tucson, Arizona, from where her husband hails, homes from home; their wedding took place in Arizona in 2008. ‘It was very attention-seeking,’ she says. ‘A big dress, big guest-list kind of wedding.’

Four months after she left Guildhall she was cast alongside Peter O’Toole in the British comedy drama Venus, as the feisty, complicated Jessie who captivates an ageing actor. ‘That was huge. Every name they kept attaching, like Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Griffiths, had me slowly withering in fear. I have no idea why they cast me. I presume because the character was out of her depth and incredibly naïve, and I walked into the audition and I didn’t need to act.’

Venus was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, as well as an Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe. On the back of its success, Jodie went on to star in both St Trinian’s films, the 2011 British sci-fi comedy horror Attack the Block and, most recently, One Day, opposite Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. This summer will see the release of three more films: Ashes, also with Jim Sturgess; Good Vibrations, a punk-rock chronicle of record-store owner Terri Hooley’s life, with Dylan Moran; and the psychological thriller A Thousand Kisses Deep, with Emilia Fox.

Now Jodie is rehearsing for her ‘dream part’ of Antigone in Sophocles’ tragedy, which follows on from Oedipus Rex. The production stars Christopher Eccleston as the male lead, Creon, and is directed by one of theatre’s brightest young stars, Polly Findlay. ‘I can think of few other actresses of Jodie’s generation who have the kind of theatrical muscle that she has,’ says Findlay. ‘She has a rare combination of power, sensitivity and sheer likeability on stage that made her the obvious choice for the part.’ It’s a description of herself that Jodie doesn’t recognise. ‘I’m neurotic, flappy, can’t sit still and get bored very easily. I’m a pain in the arse really. It’s as if I’ve been injected with caffeine.’ Manic, modest, and with theatrical muscle – Jodie Whittaker’s quirky appeal is down to more than luck. ES

Antigone is at the National Theatre from 23 May (nationaltheatre.org.uk)