Living alone in a plush flat, Billie Piper was already an international star by age 15.
Her chirpy tunes were a hit on virtually every continent and while most kids her age just enjoyed being teenagers, Billie worked, toured, posed and performed – and rebelled – under her very own roof.
“I feel it was all too much, too soon for me,” says Billie, 28.
“At the time I loved it and thought I could handle it. But now I think I should have done more teenage angst stuff, more staying at home, being with family and enjoying the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.”
It wasn’t only flying the nest that she did before most of her peers. Billie was married to DJ Chris Evans at 18, divorced by 24 in 2007 and married again before the year was out.
And of course Billie, by then married to actor Laurence Fox, became mum to Winston when she was just 25. It’s fair to say the young singer turned actress has packed a lot in.
“On reflection, I think it was kind of mad,” she says of her early days in the industry. “I don’t blame anyone around me because I was active in pursuing all those things, but it could have gone a very different way.
“I think it’s going to be an absolute disaster for most kids being that famous that young, living alone in the middle of London. But I was OK. I was close to my friends and my family were close to London anyway, so it’s not like I was miles away from everyone on my own.”
For famously ambitious Billie, being thrown in at the deep end so young had a lasting effect.
“Being away from your home so much at such a young age has a massive impact,” she says. “You become fiercely independent, which can be hard. I was literally living on my own as a 15-year-old in my flat in London.
“At the time I couldn’t have asked for anything more brilliant, not having to be parented or to live under their rules. But it was kind of mad.”
It’s reflections like these that make the idea of her two-year-old son Winston getting sucked into the fame game so daunting for Billie.
“I can’t imagine Winston doing anything like this,” she says. “I don’t even want to think about him leaving the house on his own, let alone moving and shaking round the world with a load of strangers.
“It makes me want to kill myself actually, how scary that is.
“He’s still only little and of course he’ll eventually get to the point where he’ll want to do his own thing, but for now the thought of him working in this industry makes me feel sick!”
Memories of the high expectations and pressures to be a good role model are still strong. “Being a teenager is such a weird time anyway,” she recalls.
“You’re at your most insecure and being exposed like that is very difficult.
“I guess with interviews and being involved in the business I was expected to be a great conversationalist, a really interesting person, a grown-up, even though I was only 15. There’s a lot of pressure to keep your s*** together.
“That’s weird anyway, but especially so when everyone else your age is going a little bit crazy. You want to be testing out your madness, but there was this pressure to be a role model. You want to be out smoking fags and drinking and being a pain in the a*** and I felt like I shouldn’t. Although I did it anyway, I smoked and I drank, the same way I do now.”
On getting hitched at 18, and settling down..
One of the most talked about decisions Billie has made was marrying Chris Evans when she was just 18. He was 16 years her senior. She insists she wasn’t being precocious and wanted a relationship in her life that felt completely genuine.
“It was a combination of things,” she explains. “It was partly about falling genuinely in love with someone and also wanting something to feel real.
“Like a relationship that was absolutely real and wasn’t about business or work or all of those things.
“Just something I could actually feel, that was simple and nothing to do with all that.” Now though, heading towards 30 and settled down with her young family, Swindon-born Billie takes the pressures of fame much more easily in her stride.
“I’m used to the fame thing by now,” she says. “And I think you can take or leave as much of it as you want, really.”
Billie, who wore clothes from friend Emily Caunter’s London vintage shop Peekaboo for our shoot, adds: “You don’t always have to be in the middle of everything and sometimes it’s better not to be. All of that isn’t really for me.”
On why her husband doesn’t watch her sex scenes, and her own double standards..
For someone who’s not as keen to court controversy as she once seemed, one of Billie’s most famous acting roles, as a high class prostitute in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, wasn’t exactly demure. In fact, she doubts husband Laurence has ever watched a full episode.
“Well he certainly hasn’t watched one with me!” she says. “It’s not really family viewing, is it? And it’s not something you’d want to watch with your husband. It’s weird for me too though, even on my own. Let’s face it, you don’t want to watch yourself simulating sex. I don’t know if Laurence has consciously decided not to watch it, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t seen a full episode.”
Billie Piper
Hearing about some of the graphic scenes, it’s not surprising her husband isn’t a fan.
“I had one scene where I had to pretend to be an array of farmyard animals while having sex,” says Billie. “That was quite humiliating. I wasn’t annoyed with anyone for asking me because when I read it on paper I was laughing and completely game to do it.
“But on the day I thought, ‘oh wow’ because it’s not the best thing to do and you don’t exactly feel amazing doing it. But you just have to crack on. It wasn’t until afterwards that I felt like having a meltdown. I wasn’t upset, just embarrassed, and I really felt I needed to have a word with myself.”
Would she be happy for Laurence to be filmed acting in similar sex scenes? “No way!” she laughs.
“It would not be OK. Fine, I have extreme double standards, but I couldn’t handle it. I’d be down on set hawk-eyeing everyone, being an overwhelming pain.
“Well, to be fair to me he has had kissing scenes in the past, which I’ve handled with good grace – although he might say otherwise.”
On the end of playing a prostitute, and why there’s no place like home..
With two iconic roles behind her – Secret Diary’s Belle du Jour and Doctor Who’s Rose Tyler – what’s next for Billie Piper?
“Well it’s an absolute no for music,” she says. “That’s very much in the past for me. And it’s totally the end of Doctor Who for me, too. I can’t imagine anything would bring me back, and they’re done with Rose.
“They’ve got this great new set up with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan and it works brilliantly. So there’s no way in the world it will happen again for me – well not for the foreseeable future.
“Both Belle and Rose have been brilliant for my career, but I don’t know yet if they might become curses some day. They haven’t been so far, but who knows? The problem with something like Secret Diary is that you could end up getting endless sexy scripts and a long line of sexual predator parts, which you could tire of.
“It’s not something I want to keep doing over and over again. And I got a lot of stick about it, too. Playing a prostitute doesn’t go down well with everyone, surprisingly. But the role took me into the American market, which is fantastic.”
Next stop the US, then?
“Well Laurence and I would both consider it and there do seem to be more roles there,” she says. “But I love it here, I love England and I can’t imagine moving permanently. It’s this time of year that you think there’s nowhere more beautiful in the world. There are brilliant things about LA, but I’m a real sucker for home.”
