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.

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