First female Doctor Jodie Whittaker shuns the limelight and puts family first after secret heartache of losing her nephew
WHEN Jodie Whittaker was 15 years old a careers adviser told her that her dream of being an actress was “a stupid idea”.
No wonder that yesterday, as she walked in the sunshine the morning after being named as the new Doctor, Jodie seemed to be enjoying the last laugh.
The news that a woman was to take on the role was cheered by the likes of current Doctor Peter Capaldi, former companions Billie Piper and Karen Gillan and even Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
And Colin Baker, who played the sixth Doctor, tweeted: “Well I never, the BBC really did do the right thing and let the Doctor be in touch with her feminine side. As a father of daughters — result!”
But stepping out in London with her young daughter yesterday, the 35-year-old was also stepping into the kind of spotlight she has always avoided.
Despite appearing in a string of hits including Broadchurch, in which she played grieving mum Beth Latimer, and both St Trinian’s films, she once said: “People never recognise me in the street and that’s brilliant, I love it.
“A chameleon face is good, because you don’t want to be going everywhere and have people thinking they know you.
“I couldn’t imagine sitting in a restaurant and someone on the next table being interested in the crap I was spouting.
“I’ve been around people who that has happened to and sometimes it makes me angry on their behalf.”
Determinedly down-to-earth, Jodie is expected to use her own Yorkshire accent when she arrives on BBC1 screens as the Thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor at Christmas.
She grew up with older brother Kris in Skelmanthorpe, West Yorks, nine miles from Huddersfield, and most of her friends are still from those old days.
Her mum Yvonne was a nurse who later became a magistrate, and dad Adrian is the former president of the Huddersfield Central Cricket League.
And unlike her careers adviser at Huddersfield’s Shelley Community College, her parents always backed her long-standing acting dream.
She said: “I always wanted to be an actress, and from the age of five I was using it as an excuse not to do my homework.
“A career adviser when I was 15 told me acting was a stupid idea.
“She said, ‘You need a back-up plan’, and thank God my mum and dad were completely adamant that that’s the wrong way to go. They said, ‘Get a back-up plan if it all goes pear-shaped at 30. Just go do it’.”
Jodie left school at 16 and did a Btec in performing arts before auditioning for a place at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama at the age of 20. She later recalled: “I’d never auditioned before I auditioned for drama school. They thought I was this strange person from the North when I turned up.
“I was very, very jammy and had the dialect teacher (as a member of the judging panel) in the first round of auditions.
“That’s why I think I got in, because she heard my voice and thought, ‘Oh, that’s a nice accent we haven’t got yet’.
At Guildhall, fellow students included Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery and Captain America’s Hayley Atwell.
In her final year Jodie was awarded a gold medal for “most improved student”.
With her typical dry humour she has noted: “Which basically means I was s*** when I started and left not embarrassing the school.”
Drama school was also where Jodie met American-born fellow student Christian Contreras. The couple married in 2008. But she has firmly declared that her relationship with the actor and screenwriter is not a topic for public discussion.
She once said: “I can totally understand how that comes across as arsey, but, yuh, so I’m married to Christian.
“And I’m not going to deny I’m married, I wear a bloody wedding ring after all. We had a big wedding in Arizona — very attention-seeking, big dress, big guest-list kind of wedding. It was obviously in my top five days.”
Christian has appeared in BBC1 series The Syndicate and Oscar-winning film Zero Dark Thirty.
In a rare mention of him, in a local Huddersfield paper, she said: “He’s from Yuma in Arizona, and I go there every year for Christmas in the heat It’s the exact opposite of a cold Huddersfield Christmas.”
Their daughter is now two but they are so protective of her privacy that they have not publicly revealed the little girl’s name. Jodie began picking up work as soon as she left Guildhall, working at London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, an episode BBC1’s Doctors and an afternoon radio play before landing her big break.
That was starring opposite Peter O’Toole in 2006 movie Venus, playing a would-be model who becomes the focus of obsession by the character played by screen legend O’Toole.
In it she was seen naked from behind and also bared her breasts to the Lawrence of Arabia star.
She has since also performed a racy scene in Channel 4’s Black Mirror and posed for a nude life drawing class in 2014 Sky1 series The Smoke.
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As her career was taking off, another member of the Whittaker family was also making a name for himself — Jodie’s young nephew Harry. He joined the cast of Emmerdale as a baby in 2011, sharing the role of Leo Dingle with another boy. Like his character Leo, Harry had Down’s syndrome.
But tragically, the smiley toddler died aged just three in July 2014.
It was a heart-breaking time for the close-knit family.
Proud aunt Jodie, an ambassador for learning disabilities charity Mencap, had previously revealed: “All we want is for Harry to grow up in a safe and unprejudiced society where people with Down’s syndrome or any learning disability are given the support and care they need.”
Whiners out of step
By Elizabeth Day, novelist
I’M thrilled the new Doctor is a woman. Jodie Whittaker is a brilliant actress but in this case, her talent is of secondary importance. The real reason I’m cheering her on in the role is because she’s female, pure and simple.
Why? Because science fiction has always been such a male-dominated world. It’s as if we’ve all been led to believe that only little boys want to play with sonic screwdrivers and the time-travelling Tardis.
That’s rubbish, of course. Girls want these things too. It’s just that, until now, there haven’t been enough role models.
In the real world of science, all the big-hitters are men. Ninety nine per cent of Nobel Prizes for physics go to men.
Which is why I’m so happy progress is being made – on screen, at least. The Doctor is incredibly intelligent, surrounded by gadgets and knows how to problem-solve under pressure. She’s also pretty good at saving the world. What better message to send out to young girls who will grow up with Doctor Who?
The men who have criticised the choice of Jodie for the role need to put on their big boy pants and stop whining.
They want to blame the political correctness brigade, but that’s just a fig-leaf for their own insecurity. These blokes have been sitting in their mother’s basements playing World of Warcraft in their Y-fronts for far too long. Now they’re out of step with the times.
The whole point of the Doctor is that it’s a fictional character who can regenerate in different forms. So it’s entirely logical the Doctor is a woman. And a kick-ass, strong, planet-saving woman at that.
- Elizabeth Day is a journalist and the author of best-selling thriller The Party.
Meanwhile, yesterday those who know Jodie from her Yorkshire days — the friends she calls her “lifers” — are thrilled after Sunday night’s Doctor Who announcement.
Jodie had not even been able to let her parents in on the news beforehand — and when discussing the role with husband Christian used the code word “Clooney” in case they were overheard.
One friend — local English teacher Matthew Burton, who appeared on Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire in 2013 — tweeted: “Jodie Whittaker is truly one of the kindest, funniest, most lovely human beings on the face of the earth. So chuffed for her.”
And the whole of Skelmanthorpe — nicknamed “Shat” because miners shattered rocks for a tunnel there, and used as a location for Seventies sitcom Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggit — is also overjoyed.
One of her former neighbours, Martin Corless, 55, said of the actress yesterday: “She is a proper Shatter. She is down-to-earth and will talk to anyone.”
Neil Hutton, 50, landlord of local pub The Grove, promised: “Everyone will treat her just the same. But we are proud of her.”