大象传媒

Billie Piper first found fame in 1998 at the age of 15 when her debut single Because We Want To topped the UK charts. A change of direction came in 2005 when she was cast in the reboot of Doctor Who as Rose Tyler, the Doctor’s travelling companion. She has since then starred in TV dramas such as Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Penny Dreadful. On stage, her performance in an adaptation of Lorca's play Yerma in 2016 earned huge critical acclaim, and she won multiple awards. She is currently nominated for a Best Actress BAFTA for the dark TV comedy drama I Hate Suzie, which she co-created.

Here’s what we learned from her Desert Island Discs…

1. Her first stage performance wasn’t a happy experience

“I played Mary in the nativity play at school,” explains Billie, “and I had to sing a solo. I was so terrified that I was shaking. I was holding baby Jesus, this doll, and I was just looking down at it, as its eyes were rolling - because [dolls’ eyes] used to have that sort of rolling effect. As I was looking down and singing my solo, the baby was falling out of my hands and arms, and ultimately on to its head in the middle of my solo! It's really haunted me and I get that nervous still before I go onstage.”

2. She still turns to a song she first heard as a child when she needs inspiration

Billie’s first choice for her desert island is Pure Imagination, from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, sung by Gene Wilder who played the leading role. “I spent a lot of time in my youth watching musicals and theatre,” says Billie, “And this [song] really inspired me… and I listen to it a lot when I'm at the beginning of a creative process. It has a lot of curiosity, and there's something quite creepy about it. And those two things in combination are a big hit for me.”

3. Billie’s parents supported her many ambitions from an early age

“I had a lot of fire in my belly as a kid about things I wanted to do, and things I loved and things I wanted to pursue,” says Billie. “My mum was always amazed by that and my dad would champion it all the way. He would find money because we didn't have loads of money to make these things happen. So I think I was in and out of clubs - not nightclubs,” she laughs, “drama club, dance club, extracurricular activities all week long. But that was something I wanted and I felt very supported in that way.”

4. She moved by herself to London as a young teenager to attend a stage school

Billie left her Swindon home and headed to the capital when she won a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where her contemporaries included Amy Winehouse. “I'd say it was really, really competitive in sort of an unnatural way for that age,” reflects Billie. “There was a fair share of bitchiness but also it was a great laugh... I really loved it but it definitely was a bit of a bloodsport, for sure, because you were competing for work [with the other students] as well. When you joined that school, you joined an agency, and you are very aware of children being cast in work, work that you maybe didn't get from your casting, or you weren't even put up for, and why weren't you put up for it? It makes you super aware at an age that I'm not sure you should be.”

Billie left after little more than a year because her career had started to take off.

5. Billie’s fourth musical choice reminds her of a pre-teen musical passion

“I feel like my life is divided into two parts,” Billie says. “Some people might think it’s divided into more but for me, it's pre-fame and post-fame and [this song] reminds me of a time before I became famous, and I reflect back really fondly when I felt like a normal kid and I was able to do normal things. I was obsessed with rave music as a kid. In fact, I think for my ninth birthday party I had a rave themed party and I wore a floppy velvet hat… cycling shorts and a puffer jacket - basically what I wear now minus the hat,” laughs Billie.

The track is Out of Space by The Prodigy.

6. She broke records as a pop star – but now feels that she was playing a role

Billie signed a record deal at the age of 15, and became the youngest female artist ever to go straight to number one in the UK charts when her debut single was a hit in 1998. Her second single was also an instant chart-topper. But looking back now, she says “I always felt like a charlatan because I love singing but I didn't have the strongest voice. I didn't write songs, I didn't play or write music. Acting was what I wanted to do first and foremost, and on some level, I was acting my way through [being a pop star], but it became too hard to do.”

7. She thinks her pop success and image made it harder to launch her acting career

In 2005 Billie landed the role of Rose Tyler in the newly revamped Doctor Who and she went on to win the Most Popular Actress Award at the National Television Awards in 2005 and 2006.

But finding the work she wanted as an actor wasn’t straightforward, especially after her marriage at the age of 18 to Chris Evans led to frequent newspaper stories. She says that appearing in Doctor Who was “a very exciting and satisfying time because it was hard to get an acting job with my history as first a pop star and then this sort of burned-out child star, which is how I think I was painted - certainly through the years I was with Chris. And actually I've had to do that until quite recently, to shift people's perception, which is really annoying and completely unhelpful.”

8. Hip hop gives her mental strength – especially Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G

“I am a massive Biggie Smalls fan,” says Billie. “It reminds me of my life in Swindon. I absolutely love hip hop. It's something that people don't really know about me, and also something people always think slightly weird, but I always listen to Biggie before I go into any new experience: before I go on stage, or before I go and an audition for a new job, or before I go and do parent-teacher... I listen to Biggie.”

Her Notorious B.I.G disc for her desert island is Juicy: ”This is one of my favourite tracks but this is also slightly more radio friendly,” laughs Billie.

9. She now wants to express life as she experiences it – and hold nothing back

Billie’s most recent TV series, I Hate Suzie, which she created with writer Lucy Prebble, is a dark comedy about a former teenage star whose life descends into chaos when her phone is hacked. “It's obviously quite heightened,” says Billie. “But there are moments in the show that perfectly depict things that have happened inside my mind.” And she also says that she and her co-creator want to offer a complete picture, “in a way that fully lifts the lid on what it means and what it costs to be female… It is exposing and I do want to pull apart and unpack the uglier sides of being alive, being female, being a mother, being sexual, being a lover, a wife, all of those things but it has to feel real to me. We both have that bleak sense of humour. It's working quite well for us so far.”