Billie Piper reveals she collapsed in a club aged 18 because of an eating disorder

Billie Piper has revealed she once collapsed at the age of 18 after ‘days of Diet Cokes and Marlboro Lights’ exacerbated her eating disorder in 1996.

The actress, 38, wrote a candid essay for ELLE UK on Thursday, and detailed how she had a ‘dramatic turn’ which saw her get taken to hospital by a man she later learned was Paul Solomons, who is now Kylie Minogue’s fiancée. 

Explaining what happened, she wrote: ‘It was 2000 when I passed out in a Covent Garden club – “foaming at the mouth”, apparently, but I have no reason to believe that.

‘My PR rang through to my hospital bed to fill in some blanks – I’d been carried out of the club by a man, apparently. A hero or a pest? I wondered. It’s always hard to tell. 

‘(Later, I’d find out his name is Paul, like my dad. He’s Welsh, works at GQ and will, in time, become a dear friend, a blinding success and Kylie Minogue’s fiancé. Hero, not pest. Kylie knows.)’

Billie went on: ‘My “dramatic turn” – as I liked to call it – was a result of days of Diet Cokes and Marlboro Lights fuelling a very active eating disorder, cystitis that crept up my back and into my kidneys, a goblet of sweet white wine and a mind and body dissociation that I feared for the very first time. 

‘Following that sojourn in hospital, my mother dragged me to a local therapist. I took immediate offence when the therapist asked me if my not eating was because I wanted to be a boy. 

‘Ridiculous, I thought. I left. I think about that comment a lot. Maybe I did want to be a boy. Maybe we all did on some level. Or maybe she was s**t at her job. In any case, that was the end of therapy for me. Until I was 34.’

Billie went on to detail her mental health has morphed over the years, saying she has often had to deal with anxiety and an ‘obsession’ with achieving more.

She explained: ‘My anxiety, my need to achieve, my obsession with outdoing myself at every juncture has been a running theme in my life. 

‘Later, this need to achieve and control and be the best version of myself morphed into an eating disorder, then later into what I can only describe as an addiction to work.’

Billie stipulated that being aware of her mental health struggles meant she could work on it: ‘Now being aware of that propensity means I can, to an extent, do something about it.’

The Doctor Who star went on: ‘Therapy does not change who you are. My inner workaholic is still there. So is that white noise at 3am. 

‘Working on my mental health is about awareness. Being aware when I’m behaving in a certain way or being overly critical of myself or living for someone else.

‘The change is awareness. I wish it could be more fantastical than that, but the reality is that it just isn’t. 

‘All the therapy in the world, all that money spent, and I’m still drawn into behaviours I wish I’d been cured of – but I don’t think I ever will be and that’s OK.’ 

Billie, who has had a successful acting and singing career, also discussed the pressures that women face every day to make sure they ‘have it all’.

‘As I entered my thirties and the stakes of all my life decisions became so much greater, I felt restless under this new pressure,’ she claimed.

‘The pressure to not just do your job and live your life and keep your kids content – but instead to exist in hyper 4D. 

‘Look, I understand these pressures affect men, too. I’m well aware of how this movement has left men scrabbling. But this very particular issue is, in my opinion, an acutely female epidemic.’

The March issue of ELLE UK is on sale from 04 February 2021. 

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