Jodie Whitaker: 'Venus was the most open performance I will ever give'

So, what is the actress Jodie Whittaker up to next? "I'd love to say, 'oh, I'm working with Steven Spielberg', but am I hell!" exclaims the young woman with characteristically bluff good humour. "If I were, I'd be walking around in a T-shirt saying, 'by the way, ask me about my next job!'"

Whittaker may not be working with Spielberg, but she has no shortage of other high-quality offerings in the pipeline. If you are not yet familiar with her work, chances are that by this time next week you will be. In the coming days, she's going to be on our screens more often than Alistair Darling announcing the nationalisation of another bank.

If you want any proof, just check out Monday's TV schedules. At 9pm ITV1 is showing Wired, a twisty, topical thriller about bank fraud, co-starring Jodie Whittaker as a bank clerk duped into participating in a major crime. Meanwhile, also at 9pm, C4 is showing The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, a moving account of one family's campaign to get justice for their dead son, co-starring, er, Jodie Whittaker as Thomas's bereaved, anguished sister. Oh yes, and if you tune into BBC1 this Sunday, you can catch Tess of the D'Urbervilles, featuring, that's right, Jodie Whittaker, as the heroine's fellow milkmaid and rival in love, Izzy Huett.

This autumn Whittaker will also be taking leading roles in Consuming Passion, 100 Years of Mills and Boon, a new BBC drama about the publishing house, and Good, a big-screen adaptation of the CP Taylor stage play about a "good" German (Viggo Mortensen) who is seduced into joining the Nazi cause. Not bad for a 26-year-old just three years out of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Despite all this, the Huddersfield-born actress is not getting carried away. When we meet in central London, she manifests an appealingly self-deprecating streak. At one point gleefully acknowledging the potential horror of being lectured on world politics by a young actress, she smiles that, "people know all these things already, so the idea of me talking about them is completely self-indulgent. 'Who the hell does she think she is? She's spouting off like she knows it all, and she didn't even get any A-levels!'"

The actress, who boasts a broad Yorkshire accent and a bright blond hairdo, was spotted two years ago by the director Roger Michell (Enduring Love, Notting Hill, Persuasion), who cast her in the title role of the feature film, Venus. The eponymous, feisty young character, who captivates an ageing actor (the Oscar-nominated Peter O'Toole), was, remarkably, only Whittaker's third professional screen role (after scarcely high-profile jobs on the daytime soap Doctors and an Afternoon Play).

Whittaker thinks now that her inexperience contributed to her success in Venus. "I look back on that film and think, 'brilliant!'," beams the actress, who also attracted attention for her sparky performance in St Trinian's. "I had no conception of the outcome. That's the most open performance I'll ever give."

Whittaker is now appearing in two much darker works. She takes the leading role in Wired, a complex ITV1 thriller. It centres on Louise (Whittaker), a bank employee, who is exploited by a charismatic acquaintance (Laurence Fox from Lewis) into unwittingly helping an unscrupulous gang commit fraud. She soon becomes entwined in a morally ambiguous relationship with an undercover police officer (Toby Stephens, Jane Eyre). As banks dominate the headlines every single day, the piece could not be more timely.

Meanwhile, in The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, an affecting one-off drama executive produced by Charles Furneaux (Touching the Void), Whittaker plays Sophie, the sister of Thomas Hurndall (Matthew McNulty, The Mark of Cain). Hurndall was a young British photography student who in Gaza on 11 April 2003 was fatally wounded by a single bullet from an Israeli Defence Force sniper, as he attempted to shepherd a group of Palestinian children to safety. He died in hospital nine months later, aged 22.

The film, directed by Rowan Joffe (Secret Life) and penned by the playwright Simon Block, charts the determined struggle of his north London family – Sophie, her father Anthony (Stephen Dillane, The Hours), her mother Jocelyn (Kerry Fox, Welcome to Sarajevo), and her brother Billy (Harry Treadaway, Control) – to discover the truth about what happened to Thomas. The Hurndalls, who previously knew little about the complicated politics of the Middle East, want above all else to make his life count for something. They are not put off by the daunting task of confronting the most powerful institution in Israel, the IDF.

In the film, as his son lies dying in hospital, Anthony is warned by Tom Fitzalan-Howard (Mark Bazeley, The Queen), the defence attaché to the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, not to expect much from an internal investigation by the IDF: "this is the toughest neighbourhood on earth. Israel goes to sleep with its boots on, two guns underneath the pillow and both eyes wide open."

The hitherto calm Anthony suddenly erupts with rage. "Tom was shot saving children, for Christ's sake. I don't care how tough the neighbourhood is. That cannot be allowed to pass unquestioned. This is my son. One day I'm going to have to watch him die, but not without the fight of my life."

But the drama, which was filmed in Jordan with the full cooperation of the Hurndall family, is careful not to deal in black and white stereotypes of "goodies" and "baddies". It takes pains to flesh out the background of the sniper, Wahid Taysir (Ziad Bakri), and to explain the motives of this soldier, who in January 2004 was sentenced to eight years in a military prison for the manslaughter of Hurndall.

The film had a resounding impact on Whittaker. She says that on the set of The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall there was an air of humble respectfulness which is not always present on film productions. "We had none of that 'your trailer is bigger than mine' kind of attitude," avers the actress. "In fact, can you imagine even having any trailers in that environment? That would have been horrendous."

The locations endow the drama with a rare sense of authenticity, the actress reckons. "We were filming in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, which infused the whole production with a reality. It wasn't a glamorous film set. We didn't want to intrude on people's lives and say, 'we're going to spend thousands of pounds making a film here'. That would have been disrespectful."

The actress underlines that the purpose of the film is to relate a human drama that has perhaps been overlooked. "Not many people know this story. It's vital to tell it because it's recounted from a family's point of view, not a politician's. It's not one person in a suit telling another person in a suit what's going on. It's not preaching or telling you what to feel. It's just a very human story."

Whittaker is keen to stress that the drama is not taking sides. "Films should not be made because they might upset people. But this is not setting out to be antagonistic. It's not favouring anyone or trying to start a political campaign. It's not anti-Israeli or anti-Palestinian. It's just a story about what happened to this family from north London. I can't say what other people will feel about the film; I'd just like it to start a conversation."

The actress decided not to meet Sophie before filming. "We were not there to embellish the story by trying to copy someone's mannerisms. We were only there to serve the script."

All the same, Whittaker approached the job with particular caution as she was playing a real person. "You have to be so careful," she asserts. "You're very aware that you're holding someone's life story in your hands. In no way would I claim to have any understanding of what the Hurndalls went through – that would be incredibly pretentious. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime job because we all felt such a responsibility to get it right.

"Without being arrogant enough to assume I have any clue about what it must have been like for the Hurndalls, this is one of those roles that will always live with me emotionally. You'd have to be a completely numb person not to be profoundly affected by a job like this."

'The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall' is on Channel 4 and 'Wired' is on ITV1, both at 9pm on Monday