While fans celebrate House's season 8 pickup, the show's star, Hugh Laurie, admits he may be hanging up his stethoscope at the end of next year.
"The end of that [eighth] season looks like the end of the show," Laurie reportedly told the U.K.'s Radio Times (via the New York Post). "That's as far as they've got me for."
Appearing as cranky but brilliant doc Gregory House on the long-running Fox medical drama has no doubt been taxing on the British actor, 51.
"Doing weekly TV is like joining the Navy and going on the other side of the world for 10 months of the year," the two-time Golden Globe winner told Parade magazine. "But the truth is that whatever challenging situation you're in, somebody somewhere has got a much more extreme version. So I think one ought to shut up and not moan about it."
While a show source tells The Post "it's premature to speculate beyond season 8," Laurie, who earns a reported $400,000 per episode, has already planned his exit strategy.
"We don't talk about when we'll pack it in," Laurie, who will soon release a blues album, Let Them Talk, says. "When the time comes, I think it would be good to have sort of a clean finish rather than just sort [of] trailing off. I'd like to go out with a bang, not a whimper."
By Allison Corneau for UsMagazine.com. For more Channel Surfing, click here.
