Billie Piper : The World's Highest Paid 'Prostitute'

Vice has its virtues for Billie Piper. The actress has joined the ranks of Britain's best paid TV stars after agreeing a £400,000 deal to reprise the role of Belle de Jour.

Her commitment to a fourth series of The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl for ITV2 will see her earn £50,000 an episode.

In total, it is considerably more than the £100,000 which Brooke Magnanti - the real-life Belle whose diary inspired the TV series - says she earned in her time as a £300-an-hour prostitute.

Miss Piper's bumper pay packet puts the 27-year-old former singer some way ahead of most soap stars, and has surprised some because Secret Diary does not even air on ITV's main channel.

However, the series has been a ratings hit and when it debuted in 2007 it recorded an impressive 1.8million viewers, one of the biggest audiences for ITV2 since the digital channel was launched.

The fourth series is said to follow the character as she continues to juggle her double life as an author and an escort.

Filming for the show will begin later this year and ITV2 is hoping to screen the series from January 27, 2011.

Billie has won awards for her role in the drama series which is based on the blog and the books by the pseudonymous Belle de Jour.

But after series three finished in March, she admitted that she did not know where the programme could further take her character.

Billie who is also well known for her role as Rose Tyler, the assistant to David Tennant’s Doctor Who, also said it was difficult to balance the demands of motherhood while trying to play Belle de Jour.

She said: ‘There were moments when I wondered what on earth I was doing and thought I should be at home feeding my baby, rather than rolling around in my underwear on a bed with another man.’

Billie is married to actor Laurence Fox, 31, son of actor James Fox, and they live in West Sussex with their 19-month-old son Winston.

And she recently said she never discusses her Belle de Jour scenes with her husband of two years.

She explained: 'We don’t talk about it, we don’t watch the show together, he seems very relaxed about it which is slightly alarming sometimes.'

But she said her father had tried to watch Secret Diary Of A Call Girl but found it too difficult to see his daughter in such an explicit role.

She said: 'He's a builder and he's at the builders' merchant... well you can imagine. It's terrible. "Saw your daughter on the telly. T*ts out again."

Related Post