The 'Penny Dreadful' actress reflects on growing up under the spotlight as a young star, finding Britney Spears' struggle with fame is quite similar to her own.

• Apr 28, 2021

AceShowbiz - Billie Piper can relate to Britney Spears' struggles with mental health in the spotlight.

The actress first found fame as a singer when she was 13-years-old and she admitted seeing some similarities between herself and the "Toxic" singer, who suffered a breakdown.

She told Fearne Cotton's "Happy Place" podcast, "I don't know anyone who worked as hard as I did at 15. It was a combination of burnout, the trauma of becoming really famous, being disconnected with my family, a lack of control in my life - hence the eating disorder."

"I also felt I was a teenager and changing emotionally and psychologically so much. When I think of the life I lived as a child, with an 18-hour working day and never seeing my family, I see how it negatively impacted my life."

"My experience is one I just escaped from but it could have gone one or two ways. You think, 'It is so easy not to come out of that alive or without any trust and without some crippling mental health issue.' "

Billie Piper was not the only celebrity who could relate to Britney's struggle with fame.

In a separate interview, Sienna Miller said watching the "Framing Britney Spears" documentary was triggering for her because it took her back to a time when she was a paparazzi target.

"It's like a bad memory," she told The Daily Telegraph. "But watching the Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse documentaries and remembering what that time was... [When I] see footage of photographers chasing and attacking women in the way they did, I start shaking. It was so intense."

"It was a strange time to be a young person becoming well known, at the height of whatever feeding-frenzy was going on in tabloid culture."