'I don't want a penny from Chris'

Actress Billie Piper said today she will not take even "a penny" from her multimillionaire husband when they divorce.

The Dr Who star said she is not interested in a slice of Chris Evans's £30million fortune, insisting: "I'm not taking a penny from him. I think that's disgusting."

Piper, 23, who has just been awarded a six-figure deal for her autobiography, said her greatest regret is not having invited her parents to her wedding to the Radio 2 presenter in Las Vegas in 2001.

"I regret it in retrospect and we didn't speak for a while, although they understand now that at the time I had to be selfish," Piper tells Radio Times.

"I didn't want them to question it because in my head it was perfect, the first time in years I felt happy. Chris and I found each other when it could have gone badly for both of us and we saved each other from our worlds of madness."

Piper split from Evans, 40, after three years and now lives in north London with her law student boyfriend Amadu Sowe, 28. Her divorce is expected in September.

She told how she was desperate to leave Swindon, where she was brought up.

"I always wanted to leave that small-town mentality and saw a lot of things I don't want to repeat - major drug abuse, living off the dole, wives beaten up by husbands," she said.

"I felt very frustrated, easily bored. I wasn't starved of being a child; I was desperate to be adult, to work. I was focused and precocious. My dad's a real grafter who instilled a great worth ethic in me."

She left home at 12 to attend stage school and at 14 released her hit single Because We Want To, although she did not see much of the proceeds.

"There was a massive financial rip-off and, although I was working twice as hard as I am now, I was left with hardly any money," she said.