Playing House was a nightmare, says Hugh Laurie (who made £250,000 an episode)

Hugh Laurie has told how starring in US medical drama House turned into a 'nightmare' despite him being the best-paid actor on TV.

The British actor, 53, was paid a reported £250,000 an episode and won two Golden Globes for his long-running role as curmudgeonly Dr Gregory House.

But he suggested to the Radio Times that his huge success became 'a gilded cage', with the actor even fantasising about having an accident just so that he could take a few days off.

While filming the Fox show, Laurie had his car windows tinted to avoid being snapped by phone cameras and stopped buying his own groceries because he 'couldn't stand people photographing the contents of my shopping basket'.

The actor, who appeared in the drama's finale last year, admitted: 'At this distance it all sounds absurd. Ridiculous! After all, what was I doing other than playing about, telling stories with a very nice bunch of people? What could be constricting about that?

'But the repetition of any routine, day after month after year, can turn into a bit of a nightmare. 

It was his while though, you would agree with me.

             'A nightmare': Hugh Laurie, pictured leaving Paris' Gare Du Nord yesterday, said House's success turned into a 'gilded cage'