Billie Piper tends to keep her personal life just that: personal.

However, the critically-acclaimed actress has confirmed that she and her boyfriend Johnny Lloyd, ex-frontman of indie band Tribes, have welcomed their first child together.

Taking to Instagram, Piper shared a photo of herself embracing her newborn daughter and wrote: “Two weeks ago our little girl arrived. She has totally blown our minds.

“I didn’t know what I was missing but it was you Tallulah.”

Piper went on to pay tribute to her partner, as well as her sons Winston and Eugene, whom she shares with ex-husband Laurence Fox.

“(Love) you @johnny_s_lloyd wonderful daddy. And to my boys, who will never read this but anyway, two beautiful and attentive brothers. And to all you lovely lot – for messages of joy and luck and goodwill.”

The name Tallullah, for those wondering, is a given name of Native American origin, meaning “leaping water”.

Piper previously said that her pregnancy has given her “extraordinary energy”.

“I’m in the Matrix zone where you’re actually very sharp mentally and you have extraordinary energy,” the actress is reported as saying by the Irish Examiner.

“That’s what I’ve found throughout my pregnancies. Much further along it would be a very different story.”

Naturally, being Piper, she made sure to channel her energy into something productive: writing and directing her first feature film, Rare Beasts, in which she also stars.

An anti rom-com about Mandy, a career-driven single mother who falls in love with the charming, traditionalist Pete, the film promises to subvert common movie tropes and defy convention in a very big way. It also offers a fascinatingly personal comment on the price of modern feminism, according to Western Edge Pictures, the production company behind the movie.

“We have to be quite creative with shots, but we did a great deal of prep”, Piper said of filming while pregnant.

“It might be a different story in a week, but at the moment we’re sort of moving through with most of our plans intact.”

It is good to see that Piper remains in control of her own destiny and career. In an endearingly frank appearance on the Stagecraft with Gordon Cox podcast last year, Piper addressed her “life crisis”, opening up about the difference between life in your 20s and 30s in the process.

“I think [your 30s] are very challenging,” she said during the episode.

“ I think your 30s are a time when you start reflecting on everything you have or haven’t achieved, and where you’re going and what your mental health is like — are you in a circle of repetitive, negative behaviours?”

Piper continued: “Your 20s are fun, wild and without consequence. Obviously there are dark moments in your 20s, but pretty much when you compare them to your 30s, they’re a bloody walk in the park.

“In your 30s it’s like, ‘Wow, s**t is getting real’.”

The award-winning actress added: “It’s a good climate to talk about being a woman and what you’re subjected to and how you move forward.

“You have to laugh at a moment’s life crisis because otherwise it just kills you.”

Of course, Piper is not alone in experiencing this sense of crisis – many of us feel a burst of unrest when we transition from our 20s into our 30s. 

This can be due to any number of reasons, be it the fact that you’re actually settling down, reflecting more on your past, feeling increasingly unsatisfied in your chosen career, or worrying that certain doors are being closed off to you. Above all else, you may be feeling pressured to make big decisions about your personal life, which is enough to make anyone feel under attack (it’s pretty much a guarantee that thoughtless friends and family members will begin making those annoying ‘biological clock’ comments as soon as you hit 30).

In short, it’s a difficult time, to say the least. So what do we do about it?

Professor Robert Taibbi, writing for Psychology Today, suggests that you use this period of unrest for “self-reflection and recalibration”.

“What is it that you need most now?” he suggests we ask ourselves. “How, based on what you believe and have learned, is most important for you to focus upon now? What on a good day is your purpose of your life?”

Taibbi adds: “Realise that, though you may feel trapped at times, you are actually never trapped and it is matter of realising your choices, however limited right now they may seem… take the risk of speaking up rather than biting your tongue [and explore] new activities through lessons and volunteering.

“Not achieving a goal doesn’t mean failure but that there may be another road that you need to explore and take.”

While Taibbi warns against making any big changes on a whim, there is no denying that these decisions can help you feel as if you are regaining control over your life.

When Lucy Prebble, the writer of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, interviewed Piper for Stylist last year, she asked the Collateral star if there was a “specific moment” in her life when she thought ‘I am going to change things’.

Piper responded: “Yeah. I think there are times when you change something quite fundamental because something in your life becomes unmanageable and then you get addicted to changing things. So the temptation is to change everything, which has the reverse effect and causes more trauma than is healthy.”

She added: “I feel like taking risks professionally has always really paid off for me. I don’t think about work being risk-taking and strategic moves. I just think if I don’t do different things, I get bored, so most of the changes – the decision to play a prostitute or a woman who can’t have a baby – are born out of boredom in a way… not boredom, but like a sense of adventure.

“I feel like doing Secret Diary was a massive risk, but I didn’t feel the risk and I think that backfired a bit, but it led me to you! So I feel like some of the backlash from that was worth it. I feel like everything is part of some cosmic plan.”

Image: Getty