Billie Piper has opened up about her relationship with fame after rising to prominence during her teenage years.
The singer-turned-actor released her debut single, Because We Want To, as a 15-year-old in 1998, with the song going straight to number one and turning her into a star.
While she went on to then forge a successful acting career, starring in shows such as Doctor Who, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl and I Hate Suzie, Billie says she would tell her younger self not to chase fame, realising “how toxic” and “not personally fulfilling” it can be.
In a new interview on the Reign With Josh Smith podcast, Billie said: “I fucking love what I do, but matters less to me than other things in my life. I think what’s helped about being famous as a young person is realising very quickly how toxic that can be and how it is not personally fulfilling in any way.
“I’ve learned as a child that it’s really not good for you. [I’d now tell my younger self] ‘Calm down, go home. We don’t need to do this right now. Do you want to hug?’ I would put the breaks on doing all of that as quickly as I felt compelled to.”
Billie continued: “When I think back to that child, especially now that my son is 14, and I just see how young 14 is, it is shocking to me, really and thinking about where I am now is, um, yeah, I don’t, I’m completely, I feel like a completely different person. I can be a lot kinder to myself now than I was at that age.
“It’s so hard, 14, I’m just watching my son go through that now it’s a lot,” she added.
Last week, Billie admitted she also became “insanely jealous” of Britney Spears, as her own pop career was “dying out as she was hitting megastardom”.
“I was insanely jealous of her, but also loved her and was a fan. But our paths never crossed,” Billie added during an interview with The Guardian.
In the same interview, the actor also opened up about her “nurturing... but also very drunken” marriage to broadcaster Chris Evans and how the media scrutiny about their age gap – they married when she was 18 and he was 35 – affected her career.