Billie Piper 'considered suicide'

Billie Piper has admitted she contemplated suicide earlier in her career, amidst a long term battle against anorexia.

In her new autobiography Growing Pains, she reveals a phonecall to her parents from a Chicago hotel room in 1999 made her reconsider plans to take a drug overdose. The former Doctor Who star also admits to a two year fight against anorexia at the height of her pop career in her late teens. The eating disorder briefly resurfaced after her marriage to Chris Evans ended two years ago.

But Piper now claims victory, telling the Mail on Sunday yesterday: "I didn't feel qualified or ready to talk about it until I was really, really well, this year."

"I'm really happy now," she emphasised. "I was never as pretty as all the other girls. My features were always too big: my jaw too heavy, my mouth too wide. But I think I have grown into my looks."

Piper will next be seen in television adaptations of Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, to be shown on BBC One and ITV One respectively.