Billie Piper on Women Pitted Against Each Other in Film
Billie Piper, 44, talks about industry infighting and her role as casting director Patsy Pollock in Elsinore, the Oscar-tipped British film about actor Ian Charleson's final Hamlet. She says her stage work has long helped her process personal struggles.
British actor Billie Piper, 44, has described an industry that sets women pitted against each other, calling it "a blood sport", in an interview published November 13, 2026 ahead of her new film Elsinore.
Piper spoke in a London hotel suite in the middle of a three-day press junket for the Oscar-tipped British tearjerker. Outside the door, publicists, journalists and influencers moved along the corridors. Inside, the mood was calm.
A role built on a best friend
Elsinore stars Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson, best known as one of the leads in the Oscar-winning 1981 athletics drama Chariots of Fire. The film focuses only on the last months of Charleson's life.
In autumn 1989 he took on Hamlet at the National Theatre despite having Aids. He died in January 1990, seven weeks after his final performance.
Piper plays his best friend, the casting director Patsy Pollock, in a bouncy blond wig. She has not met the real Pollock, whose credits include Quadrophenia, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Mission: Impossible and Chicken Run.
Pollock has seen the film, Piper said, and apparently enjoyed the "performances".
One line sold Piper on the part. Her character's first words are: "Strong liquor, darling, as a matter of urgency!" Piper joked: "That line was the clincher for me in taking the role."
On screen, Pollock makes soup for her friend and trades gossip. She also cheers on his effort to turn a reckoning with mortality into a courageous Hamlet.
Stage work as a way through
Piper made a startling admission during the interview. Her stage acting, she said, has always been a means of processing personal struggles.
The remark led to a story about the late Billie Whitelaw, whom Samuel Beckett considered "a perfect actress". In rehearsals one day, Whitelaw asked the playwright where she should be looking. Beckett replied: "Inwards."
Piper, an Olivier award winner who first found fame as a teen pop star, laughed loudly at the story. She also starred as Rose in Russell T Davies's 2005 Doctor Who reboot, and Davies once described her as "earthed", "primal", "beautiful" and "clever".
Piper played Scott's wife in Lena Dunham's medieval romp Catherine Called Birdy, so the two are reunited in Elsinore.
