Billie Piper is set to return to our TV screens as a prostitute in major new TV drama Penny Dreadful but is she ready to shoot back into the limelight?

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl actress is part of an all-star cast in the upcoming big-budget horror thriller, which is already airing in America and is set to begin in the UK later this month.

But the 31-year-old actress suggested that international fame maybe an unwelcome side effect to the show's potential success, telling The Observer the show could become her "life for the next six or seven years" if it is recommissioned.

Set in Victorian London, Penny Dreadful features popular figures from 19th century fiction, while Piper plays an unknown Irish immigrant who is one of the show's leading stars.

The 10-part series is, she said: "Savage and gory. Loads of blood. Loads of sex."

Along with that potentially winning formula, it is produced by the Oscar-winning Sam Mendes and counts Josh Hartnett, Eva Green and Timothy Dalton among the cast.

While Penny Dreadful is set in London, it's actually filmed in Ireland, and she admitted that juggling her Cardiff-based Dr Who role as Rose Tyler with her family life proved "almost impossible."

"It was very hard to have a life and take care of my family because I was always away in Cardiff," she said of her two-year stint on the hit BBC 1 show. "Also, it was a totally different level of fame. I don't miss that, myself."

Watch a preview of Penny Dreadful

Billie Piper: New prostitute role 'could become my life'