Billie Piper

Early life and education

Piper was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 22 September 1982. She was initially named Leian Paul Piper, but her first name was legally changed to Billie on 25 April 1983 by her parents, Mandy Kent and Paul Piper. She has three siblings. Piper started dance classes aged five. Two years later, she appeared in soft-drink commercials for American TV before taking a role as an extra in the 1996 film Evita. She attended Bradon Forest School in Purton, near Swindon, but left at around the age of 12 after winning a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London.

Career

Music career

Piper's career began when she was selected to appear on the Saturday morning children's television show Scratchy & Co. She later landed a role in a television commercial promoting the pop magazine Smash Hits. She was offered a record deal at the age of 15, and in 1998, became the youngest artist to debut at number one in the UK Singles Chart with "Because We Want To", released under the stage mononym "Billie". Her follow-up single "Girlfriend" also debuted at number one.

Piper's debut album Honey to the B was released immediately afterwards, and entered and peaked at number 14 on the UK Albums Chart, selling more than 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom alone along with a platinum certification, and a double-platinum certification in New Zealand, where it peaked at number three on the New Zealand Albums Chart. However, Honey to the B found limited success in other territories, such as Australia, where it entered and peaked at number 31 on the ARIA Albums Chart despite the success of "Honey to the Bee", and in the US it went almost completely unnoticed, peaking at number 17 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart.

At the 1998 Smash Hits Poll Winners' party, Piper was nominated for Best New Act (for which she came second, it being won by B*Witched) and won Princess of Pop (she was the first to win this award). She then released "She Wants You" as the third single from the album. The song reached number three. "Honey to the Bee" was released as the fourth single from the album; like the previous single, it reached number three. At the same time, "She Wants You" was released in the US, reaching number 9 on the "Hot Club Dance Play" chart.

In 1999, Piper was nominated for two BRIT Awards and won two awards at the 1999 Smash Hits Poll Winners' party, although she was reduced to tears at the latter ceremony after being booed by fans of Ritchie Neville, whom she was dating at the time. She then started to tour and release in Asia. The singles and the album were released in mid- to late 1999. In August of that year, the follow-up to "Because We Want To" was released in Japan, a single comprising "Girlfriend" and "She Wants You" combined. She recorded a song for Pokémon: The First Movie titled "Makin' My Way (Any Way That I Can)".

During that time, Piper recorded her second album. She decided to release further records under her full name of Billie Piper. She returned to the Singles Chart in May 2000 with her third number-one single "Day & Night". She waited until September to release "Something Deep Inside", which reached number four, but her success waned. In October 2000, Piper released her second album, Walk of Life, which reached No. 14 in the UK Album Chart, but quickly fell off the charts and was certified silver in the UK. The album charted in two other countries: New Zealand, where it reached No. 17, and Australia, where it peaked at No. 23. In Piper's autobiography, she states that the album was a "commercial bomb". The song "Walk of Life", the final single off the album, was released in December 2000 and reached No. 25 in the UK Singles Chart.

Film and television performances

In 2004, Piper appeared in the films The Calcium Kid and Things to Do Before You're 30. Shortly before starting work on Doctor Who, she had a starring role in the horror film Spirit Trap, released in August 2005 to poor reviews. In November 2005, she starred as Hero in a BBC adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, updated for the modern day in a similar manner to the Canterbury Tales (2003) series in which she featured, with Hero now being a weather presenter in a television station.

In 2005, Doctor Who was resurrected after a sixteen-year absence from TV. Piper was cast as Rose Tyler, a travelling companion to the ninth incarnation of The Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston). Piper won the Most Popular Actress category at the 2005 and 2006 National Television Awards for her work on Doctor Who. BBC News named her one of its "Faces of the Year" for 2005, primarily due to her success in Doctor Who. At The South Bank Show Awards in January 2006, she was awarded The Times Breakthrough Award for her successful transition from singing to acting. In March, the Television and Radio Industries Club named her as the best new TV talent at their annual awards ceremony. In September, she was named Best Actress at the TV Quick and TV Choice Awards.

After the completion of the very successful first series of the revamped Doctor Who, the British media regularly released conflicting reports about how long Piper would be staying with the show. In March 2006, she claimed that she would continue on Doctor Who into its third series in 2007. In May, however, she was reported to be considering quitting the series, although she did express an interest in playing a female version of the Doctor in the future (possibly related to a proposed Doctor Who spin-off series about Rose, which was later dropped). In June, the BBC announced that she was to depart in "Doomsday" (2006), the final episode of the second series. Her decision to leave had been made a year previously, but had not yet been made public.

Piper starred as Hannah Baxter in Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007–2012), an ITV2 adaptation of Brooke Magnanti's The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, a memoir detailing the life of a high-class prostitute who adopted "Belle de Jour" as her pseudonym, which aired from September 2007. As part of her preparation for the role, Piper met the memoir's author two years before her identity as a research scientist was revealed in a Sunday newspaper: "I absolutely had to meet the person behind the words to be able to take the part... people did ask me about her and I just had to smile, to avoid giving anything away."

Stage work

Piper made her stage debut in a touring production of Christopher Hampton's play Treats, which opened in early 2007 in Windsor, Berkshire. Treats was to have ended its tour in the West End, at the Garrick Theatre, starting in February 2007 with previews. The play officially closed in May.

Piper played Carly in the UK premiere of Neil LaBute's play Reasons to Be Pretty at the Almeida Theatre, running from November 2011 to January 2012. It received critical acclaim from The Guardian, The Observer, London Evening Standard, Metro, The Times, The Telegraph, Time Out, The Arts Desk, Daily Express and The Financial Times, all of which rated the production with a minimum of four stars. BBC Radio 4 described Piper as "fantastic, completely brilliant. Her performance is so convincing and moving, an absolutely terrific performance". The Jewish Chronicle hailed Piper's performance as second to none, being the best of the night, and stating that "no actor can cry more convincingly than Piper", giving the show four stars.

Piper made her National Theatre debut in The Effect by Lucy Prebble, which ran from November 2012 to February 2013. The play went on to become the most critically acclaimed show of the season and Piper was nominated for the WhatsOnStage Best Actress award for her work in The Effect. The play was also nominated for Best New Play and Best Set Designer. Due to success and demand, the show was extended for a further month and an online petition was started for the show to be added to the National Theatre's Live Programming. In 2013, Piper was nominated for Best Actress at the Olivier Awards and Evening Standard Theatre Awards for The Effect. Piper also starred in Great Britain at the Royal National Theatre in 2014. On 29 May 2014, Piper appeared alongside Ben Whishaw in the Playhouse Presents television special Foxtrot.

In 2016, Piper starred in an adaptation of Federico García Lorca's 1934 play Yerma at the Young Vic, written and directed by Simon Stone. Upon opening, the play received critical acclaim, mainly for Piper's performance. She was described as "earth-quaking" and "breathtakingly-intense" by The Guardian and "a generation's greatest performance" by The Stage. The Independent described her as "shattering" with the reviewer admitting he found himself "still visibly shaking from its effects on the Tube home afterwards." The Jewish Chronicle proclaimed, "This is the performance to which [Piper's] previous excellent appearances on stage have been leading. She's one of those rare actresses who can be monumentally tragic and almost casually realistic at the same time." Conversely, The Arts Desk warned its readers that her performance was "an utterly gruelling, almost unbearable 100 minutes." Piper won all six of the available Best Actress awards for that one performance, making it one of the most acclaimed and awarded stage performances in British theatre history, and making her the only actor to have picked up all six Best Actress awards for a single performance, including the coveted Olivier Award.

Personal life

Piper married television presenter Chris Evans in a secret ceremony at the Little Church of the West in Paradise, Nevada near Las Vegas on 6 May 2001 after six months of dating when she was just 18 years old. The couple separated in 2004, and amicably divorced in May 2007, stressing that they remain friends.

Piper married actor Laurence Fox on 31 December 2007, at St Mary's Church in Easebourne, West Sussex. They have two sons. Piper was granted a divorce in May 2016. In 2024, Piper commented on the divorce in British Vogue, where she expressed the desire for her children to have privacy and anonymity, and the difficulty of this given Fox's public profile. Fox disputed some of Piper's claims. He also said that the pair had been to court many times since their split and criticised the family court system as biased towards the mother.

Piper began dating Johnny Lloyd, the frontman of Tribes, in 2016. They have a daughter. The couple separated in 2023.

Acting credits

Discography

Honey to the B (1998)

Walk of Life (2000)

Accolades

Piper has won and been nominated for more than 70 recognised awards. During her musical career, she was nominated for two BRIT Awards in 1999. In 2005 and 2006, she won two National Television Awards for Best Actress for her acting work in Doctor Who. She has also been nominated for two British Academy Television Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress for her performances in the television dramas Collateral (2018) and I Hate Suzie (2020–2022), respectively.

For her role in the 2016 production of Federico García Lorca's Yerma, Piper has won a total of six Best Actress awards, including the Laurence Olivier Award, and is now the only actor to have earned all of the currently available UK theatre Best Actress awards for a single performance.