Nathaniel Parker burst into hysterics the first time he saw Eddie Murphy on the set of The Haunted Mansion. The English actor just couldn't help himself, reports Charles Hutchinson.

NATHANIEL Parker has made his first Hollywood film for seven years, and he only hopes it will not be another seven before he returns there again.

"I absolutely adore it out there," says the Londoner, reflecting on his experiences filming Disney's new ghost movie, The Haunted Mansion. "I would work 13 months of the year in Hollywood given half the chance. I'm not going to beat around the bush, I love the way they treat you as an actor over there."

He just loves Los Angeles."It's great fun. You sit on one of those high chairs with your name on it, a cappuccino in one hand, phone in the other, getting made up on Rodeo Drive. You know, sometimes life's a gas. And you get paid too!"

Now 41, Parker last appeared in a Hollywood movie in 1997, when he starred opposite the late Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja. This time he plays grave mansion owner Edward Gracey, the troubled romantic leading man in Disney's big-budget ghost story based on The Haunted Mansion theme park ride at Disneyworld, Florida.

Parker's Hollywood return brought him the chance to work alongside one of Tinseltown's leading players, Eddie Murphy.

"It was incredibly exciting. I had a real 'Eddie Murphy moment'! The first scene I did with him was the first time I'd actually met him," Parker recalls. "I turned round and looked at him and he started doing his bit and I suddenly burst into hysterics. We had to cut and I felt like a right idiot.

"You could see his face going, 'What's the problem?' but it was just, 'You're funny Eddie, terribly funny'."

For all the lure of Hollywood, Parker has no intention of living there. After all, there are the counter demands of English family life with his actress wife Anna Patrick and their two children, and his television commitment to playing Thomas Lynley in the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. "Working on the Lynley sets are always great fun," he says. "People always want to come back and do another part and I have to say, 'You can't, you're dead'.

"I also get paid less on the Hollywood movies then I do on Lynley. They tax you big-time unless you're the star. The big guys get the money. It's still lovely though."

Despite not making the big bucks in Hollywood, Parker would prefer to shoot movies than work in theatre. On leaving the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he undertook seven leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company but he has performed in only three plays in the past 12 years, most memorably with Dustin Hoffman in the West End and on Broadway in the Merchant Of Venice.

"I really do get paid peanuts for theatre, and the only plan I've got is to do less of it. It's exhausting in a way I can't do any more," he says. "Night after night not seeing my family, and when I wake up in the morning the first thing I think about is how I pace my day, so that I've got enough energy in the evenings. So the rest of my day is really low key. I don't want that, it's a nightmare for the family."

Instead Parker will look to achieve further fulfilment in Hollywood. "I would much rather be in film," he says. "The first time I sat in front of a camera I fell in love with it. It's a bit self-indulgent but it's true."

Updated: 09:22 Friday, February 13, 2004