Green Day
How did a young girl from the Yorkshire depths end up starring in two back-to-back Irish movies? JODIE WHITTAKER talks about channelling her inner Celt for Swansong: The Occi Byrne Story
Tara Brady, 12 Oct 2010
’ve no idea how I managed it,” says Jodie Whittaker. “I ended up doing two films back-to-back in Ireland but there was no connection between them. I’m just a lucky girl, I suppose.”
Born in Yorkshire and raised on a steady diet of cricket and soccer, the award-winning 27-year-old actress isn’t sure how she ended up with so many Irish people in her life. First, there was Peter O’Toole, her co-star in the Oscar nominated Venus, the 2006 film that catapulted Ms. Whittaker into the limelight.
“He’s amazing,” she says. “Such a proud Irishman and such great fun. I learned so much watching him work. But energy is important too. Had Peter been great in Venus but horrible to me on set I wouldn’t have been able to take much from the experience.”
This year, we’ve already watched the young star doing her thing alongside Cillian Murphy in the Dublin-set caper, Perrier’s Bounty. But Swansong: The Occi Byrne Story, her second Irish movie, was, she admits, a much steeper learning curve.
“In Perrier’s Bounty, I wasn’t required to do an accent,” she says. “So learning how to speak like a Connacht woman was enjoyable but completely terrifying. Before I started I didn’t even realize there were different Dublin accents so I had a lot of work to do. I’m from Yorkshire so I know that a couple of miles down the road, you can find completely different sounds and I also know how annoying it is when you hear some actor getting it all wrong. You don’t want to let down an entire dialect.”
Set in the grim ‘70s, newcomer Conor McDermott Roe’s misery memoir charts the misfortunes visited upon its title character (Martin McCann, excellent) as he grows up without a father in a petty, insular town. Ms. Whittaker, who plays Occi’s much put-upon mother, was thrilled to be involved with such a weighty project.
“Conor is a fantastic person,” she says.“He and the producers fought so hard to get this made. It’s been so much graft. He wrote a one-man show, toured the world with it and then made it into this incredible movie. If I didn’t like him I’d be sickened.”
Page 1/3 <Previous 1 2 3 Next>
©Hot Press 2011. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy