Actress Billie contemplated suicide

Actress Billie Piper has revealed that she once contemplated suicide.

The 24-year-old former Doctor Who star tells how she came close to taking an overdose when she was alone in a hotel room in Chicago in 1999.

But at the last minute she sought her parents' help instead, phoning them.

In her autobiography Growing Pains, Billie also reveals she was anorexic for two years, between the ages of 16, when she was a year into her brief pop career, and 18, when she married TV presenter Chris Evans.

The actress became so thin she stopped menstruating, and a chapter describes her addiction to laxatives.

Billie said that previously she felt unable to discuss living with an eating disorder.

“I didn't feel qualified or ready to talk about it until I was really, really well, this year,” she told the Mail on Sunday's You magazine.

“I didn't want to say `Oh poor me,' and be known for that, and then start losing weight again…”

The actress also said she felt wary of encouraging other young girls to copy her.

“Even talking about it now I have to be so careful not to give girls ideas on how to lose weight. Because that is what I used to do. I would read an article in a magazine and think, `Ooh, I'll do that.”

Evans was instrumental in her recovery from anorexia.

"I couldn't have not eaten when I started seeing Chris," she told the magazine. "It's impossible not to enjoy life when you're with him."

In her book, Billie reveals that she has been driven by an insatiable work ethic since the age of 12 - when she won a place at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in North London.

She went on to work 18-hour days by the time she was a pop star aged 15, taking her away from her family in Swindon.

She said the worst moment came when, alone, she contemplated suicide in a Chicago hotel room. At the last minute she phoned her parents, begging to be allowed to come home.

Despite her troubled past, Billie, who says she is a size 12 on the bottom half and a size 10 on the top, claims she now goes ``for days without thinking of food''.

"I'm really happy now," she continues. "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."