Billie Piper

‘I don’t want any stage school brats!’: Sylvia Young on nurturing Billie Piper, Daniel Kaluuya and a host of stars

For 50 years, Sylvia Young’s theatre school has trained the likes of Dua Lipa, Nicholas Hoult and a ‘very naughty’ Amy Winehouse. The 82-year-old tells us how it started – and why she expelled her own daughter

Emine Saner

11, Apr, 2022 @5:00 AM

‘Exactly what cinema should be’: readers on their films of 2021 so far

From the joyous escapism of In the Heights and Cruella to the powerful storytelling of The Mauritanian, our readers reveal their movie highlights of the last six months

Guardian readers and Rachel Obordo

23, Jun, 2021 @1:56 PM

The best films of 2021 so far

Chloé Zhao hits the road, Carey Mulligan takes her revenge and Emma Stone refashions Cruella in the pick of this year’s films

Andrew Pulver

15, Jun, 2021 @8:52 AM

Rare Beasts review – Billie Piper’s deliciously dark and deadpan anti-romcom

Tragedy smacks up against slapstick in Piper’s off-kilter comedy of love and self-loathing, the star’s striking directorial debut

Mark Kermode , Observer film critic

23, May, 2021 @7:00 AM

Billie Piper: From vulnerable teen pop star to director of an ‘anti-romcom’

The characters she plays do not match her own life, the actress insists, but it’s hard not to see parallels with her own journey

Andrew Anthony

22, May, 2021 @4:00 PM

Rare Beasts review – masterful Billie Piper rips up the romcom rulebook

In her directorial debut, Piper announces herself as a truly thrilling film-maker with this bleakly brilliant inversion of the cutesy London love story

Peter Bradshaw

20, May, 2021 @8:00 AM

From Black Widow to unseen Beatles footage: what films to see as cinemas reopen

The dazzling Nomadland leads the way with a medieval thriller, a Ben Wheatley chiller and Emma Stone’s Cruella hot on its heels

Peter Bradshaw

16, May, 2021 @3:30 PM

Radical, angry, creative: British women lead a screen revolution

The Golden Globe nominations prove that the industry is in the throes of a sea change for female writers and directors

Vanessa Thorpe

06, Feb, 2021 @10:00 PM

Billie Piper: ‘I know about dysfunctional relationships – what it costs to be a woman’

After 25 years in the limelight, the actor says she is finally finding her voice as an actor, writer and now director. Does life imitate art?

Sophie Heawood

30, Jan, 2021 @8:00 AM

Stress, chess and mounting dread: how 2020 was the year of anxie-TV

As the pandemic struck and a nation retreated to its living rooms, it seemed the perfect time for light and comforting shows to boom. The reality was anything but

Rachel Aroesti

29, Dec, 2020 @1:00 PM