Billie turned down Zac Efron's girlfriend role

Billie turned down Zac Efron's girlfriend role
Billie turned down Zac Efron's girlfriend role (Image credit: PA)

Billie Piper wants to crack Hollywood - but only if she gets a meatier role than that of Zac Efron's girlfriend. The popstar-turned-actress, famous for playing a high class prostitute in ITV2's Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, said she had been offered parts in the US. "I do get a lot of scripts from America but I've been so spoilt over here with the roles that I've had, these substantial, meaty, well-rounded parts and sometimes I'm reading these scripts and I'm just like, it's to play Zac Efron's girlfriend," she said. "I like Zac Efron. I think he's completely gorgeous. But I'd only have like four scenes. I don't know, I think it's going to take me to really go for it and build it up (to make a name for herself in the US)." The actress stars as a young wife and mother who is trapped in a loveless marriage, but has an exciting affair in BBC One's new Sunday night 1950 drama A Passionate Woman. The new mum feels playing infamous escort Belle De Jour has meant she has been typecast in roles which require her to strip, so her latest part was a nice change. "There's just a long line of naked roles. She's a nurse, she's feisty, she arrives, in her bra. This is it now, this is me for life. "So it is quite nice to play someone different, she's radically different in terms of what kind of woman she is. It was a nice contrast."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.