Billie Piper’s short life has had more twists and turns than the Tardis in a
meteor storm. A suicidal pop star at 15, married to the DJ Chris Evans at
18, single at 21, she reinvented herself as an acclaimed actress and the
nation’s sweetheart. Now, at 25, the happy ending is in sight as she
prepares for her white wedding to fellow actor Laurence Fox on New Year’s
Eve. Except that, as this is a Piper production, tense drama surrounds the
event.
Perhaps it was unwise to ban children from the candlelit ceremony and
reception, but then Piper’s ex-husband Evans had thoughtfully laid on 48
hours of postnuptial booze. The groom’s family, the theatrical Fox dynasty,
are said to be furious. The prospect of the Fox pack foaming at the mouth
does not augur well for the happy day.
Laurence’s uncle Edward came to fame as the assassin in The Day of the Jackal
and excels at lip-curling scorn. Emilia, Edward's daughter, is best known as
the pathologist Nikki Alexander in the television drama Silent Witness.
Laurence’s father James left acting to join a Christian group before
establishing his reputation as a heavyweight actor in such films as A
Passage to India and The Remains of the Day.
Laurence’s other uncle, the theatrical agent Robert Fox, is said to be
particularly incensed after being told that his youngest children, Molly, 9,
and Joe, 11, will not be welcome at St Mary’s Church, a short walk from the
betrothed couple’s £750,000 home in Eastbourne, West Sussex.
By itself, the spat should not mar the occasion for Piper, a bright spirit of
flaxen mane, doe eyes and a dazzling array of teeth, who won the nation’s
heart and a clutch of awards as Rose Tyler, Doctor Who’s assistant – a
television role she will briefly reprise in March.
The simmering cocktail has a potentially explosive additive in the shape of
Piper’s parents, who are being blamed for the no-children edict. “The
bride’s parents have been largely responsible for planning the wedding,”
said a Fox family friend.
“The whole thing has gone down like a lead balloon.” Piper, who fell out with
her parents over a story they sold to the press, evidently offered them the
organising role as an olive branch. It has sprouted thorns.
It is not clear whether it was Paul and Mandy Piper who had the bright idea of
suggesting that a celebrity magazine should cover the wedding – not to save
money, it was insisted, but to ensure the wedding’s privacy. The idea put
the Foxes’ hackles up. “It was sniffed at by the Fox family and immediately
ruled out,” said a friend. They apparently harboured sour memories of
Emilia’s wedding to Jared Harris, son of the late Richard Harris, being
splashed across four pages of Hello! magazine two years ago, despite the
family turning down a deal.
Then there is the curious role of Piper’s exhusband in the wedding
arrangements. So amicable was their divorce, finalised this year, that Evans
has offered to stage Piper’s reception at the £3.2m farmhouse where he has
been spending his first Christmas with his new bride, Natasha Shishmanian, a
professional golfer. Nearby is Hascombe Court, the property where the
ginger-haired one set up home with Piper, later selling it to Boris
Berezovsky, the Russian tycoon. By other accounts, Evans has offered
alternative venues at two pubs he owns locally.
A friend of Evans said: “It really is very simple. Chris is very loyal and he
loves Billie. He always has and he will never stop loving her and wanting
all the best for her.” The views of Piper’s new husband can only be
surmised.
If reality skirts this slipway of banana skins, by the end of the day Piper
will have potted her Fox. At 29, the Old Harrovian is best known as the
sidekick of Kevin Whately’s Lewis in the spin-off from Inspector Morse, with
a creditable track record as a house guest in Gosford Park, as Captain Tom
Willis in Colditz and as the Prince of Wales in Whatever Love Means.
Fox met Piper when they worked together in a theatrical revival of Christopher
Hampton’s Treats in 2006. It was her West End stage debut and he helped her
through the nerve-racking run-up to the opening when she was ill and
afflicted by stage fright. “He made me laugh a lot, in like five seconds.
And that’s always a good sign,” she said. “He’s great. I’m marrying him, so
he really should be.”
It was a whirlwind romance, although she has denied that both of them ditched
longstanding partners. However, Fox ended his six-year relationship with
Martha Swann, a fellow Rada student, while Piper left Amadu Sowe, the law
student who shared her life for two years after her split with Evans.
Piper’s traditional white dress will be a relief after a year of wearing
corsets. Besides appearing as Fanny Price in the ITV adaptation of Jane
Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, she played the Victorian orphan Sally
Lockhart in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s historical novel The Ruby
in the Smoke. Its sequel, The Shadow in the North, will be screened tonight.
The corsets left her ribs crushed, she revealed, although she found them
admirable for her posture: “As far as the corsetry goes, the tighter the
better for me.”
Then she was into skimpy underwear for huge posters put up across London to
promote The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, in which she played the prostitute
blogger Belle de Jour. The role required several seminude scenes, including
a foursome and riding a client like a horse. The first episode attracted one
of ITV2’s biggest audiences. “I couldn’t be prudish and shy,” she said. “I
decided I was going to walk with confidence, boobs out proud.”
Fox is her fourth fiancé. The first was a teenage boyfriend in Swindon, to
whom she lost her virginity at the age of 14 (“All my friends were engaged
at 13”). The second was Ritchie Neville from the group 5ive, whose resentful
fans booed her when she was named best female star at the Smash Hits
ceremony in 1999. Then there was Evans, a legendary boozer and lothario
twice her age, whose portrayal as a corrupting influence owed much to
photographs of the couple looking tired and emotional.
By Piper’s account, Evans was a sage who rescued her from alcohol and a
destructive pop career: “We saved each other from our worlds of madness.”
Such was her gratitude to the millionaire broadcaster that on their
separation she declared: “I’m not taking a penny from him. I think that’s
disgusting.”
Piper was born in Swindon, eventually eclipsing Melinda Messenger, the former
topless model, as the Wiltshire town’s most famous export. She was a
“nightmare” for her father, a builder, and her housewife mother, she
admitted: “I was brutally ambitious as a kid, desperate to be grown-up,
desperate to leave Swindon.”
At 11 she was dispatched into the care of a great-aunt and uncle after winning
a place at the Sylvia Young theatre school in London. In her recent
autobiography, Growing Pains, she claimed that the school put pressure on
her to be “lighter, smaller and thinner”, thus exacerbating her battle with
anorexia. Besides taking laxatives, she tried eating tissues to fill herself
up. Young has dismissed her account as “rubbish”, “poisonous” and “largely
fiction”.
Piper was spotted on the cover of Music Week by the music producer Hugh
Goldsmith, who packaged the 14-year-old as “Billie”. The following year her
hit Because We Want To made her the youngest female singer to reach No 1
since Helen Shapiro in 1961.
Caught up in a relentless schedule of meetings, video recordings and
performances, she missed home and began a downward spiral of drink and
drugs. She hit rock bottom in America, where she contemplated suicide: “I
was in Chicago and it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t want to be there
doing this. It petrified me.”
She recognised Evans as her soulmate after appearing on his TFI Friday
television programme in 2001. He wooed her with a £100,000 Ferrari filled
with rose petals, although cynics claimed he knew that she did not even have
a provisional licence. “We’re in love,” she announced from a hotel in
Madeira. When they split up four years later, Evans conceded that the main
reason was their age difference. His new bride is 28 to his 41.
In Fox she has found someone closer to her own age. After recently moving to
Sussex, the couple have embraced country life, keeping chickens and becoming
regulars at the local pub, the White Horse. The Rev Derek Welsman, who will
conduct the service, said they had integrated well: “The village has left
them alone and almost protected them.”
Experience suggests Piper does not call her own tune and a happy ending will
be the beginning of an enthralling new saga.
