Pop star turned actress Billie Piper makes her big screen debut in The Calcium Kid, which opens across the country on Friday apart from in her home town of Swindon

SWINDON starlet Billie Piper will make her big screen debut at the end of this week.

But fans from her home town will have travel to either Bristol or Oxford to go and see it.

Billie, 21, a former pupil at Bradon Forest School, Purton, will appear in the film The Calcium Kid alongside heartthrob Orlando Bloom when it is released on Friday.

But the film, which has been made by up-coming director Alex de Rakoff, is not scheduled to appear at either of the town's two multiplex cinemas the 12-screen Cineworld at Greenbridge and UGC at Shaw Ridge, which has seven screens.

A spokeswoman for Cineworld's head office in London said: "It doesn't look like The Calcium Kid will be playing in Swindon this week. It is down to the distributor really it may be due to the number of prints available.

"It might make an appearance in Swindon later on, even as early as next week. It depends how well it does on its opening weekend."

Neil Savage, operations manager at UGC in Shaw Ridge, said: "The Calcium Kid is not scheduled to be shown by us this week.

"This is quite common with smaller films and it very much depends on how many copies are available in the country at the time."

Distributor Universal International Pictures was unavailable for comment.

The film will be shown on its opening night in 81 locations across the country three in Bristol the Showcase, Vue and Cineworld cinemas and at the Ozone multiplex in Oxford.

The film tells the story of Jimmy "The Calcium Kid" Connelly, a milkman and amateur boxer who, in a bizarre twist of events, is propelled onto the world stage to fight the world champion.

Billie plays Angel, a dolly bird, who is the object of Jimmy's desires.

Filmed in South London, The Calcium Kid also stars comedians Omid Djalili and Ronni Ancona.

Billie shot to fame when she was just 15 as a pop singer with her number one hit Because We Want To.

She has since made a number of television appearances including with actor James Nesbitt in an adaptation of Chaucer's A Miller's Tale last year and starred in the recent BBC2 drama Bella And The Boys.

Billie is also working on a second film, entitled You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, which stars Dougray Scott, Emilia Fox and Jimi Mistry.

She is married to media mogul Chris Evans.

Billie's agent Stephanie Charles said that Billie has been very busy, has done all her interviews for The Calcium Kid and would not be available for comment.

The new films that will be released in Swindon on Friday are the comedy-drama Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, with Jim Carrey, the thriller Secret Window, which stars Johnny Depp, and the comedy-documentary Our House, with Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore.

Anthony Osborne