Billie Piper has admitted she suffered from anorexia for two years before she married Chris Evans - and slipped back into her old ways when they split up in 2004.

Billie, who modelled before becoming a teen pop star, claims her eating disorder was inspired by a magazine article about it and it was only her reclusive marriage to Evans that helped her recover. The stress of their separation after three years of marriage, combined with depression, started her starving herself again.

She revealed recently: “I didn’t feel qualified or ready to talk about it until I was really, really well, this year.”

“I have to be so careful not to give [young girls] ideas on how to lose weight because that’s what I used to do. I’d read an article in a magazine about anorexia and think, ‘Ooh, I’ll do that…’ I was never as pretty as the other [teenage models]. My features were always too big - my jaw was too heavy, my mouth too wide.”