British actor Bill Nighy ran away from home as a teenager and fled to Paris, France in a bid to emulate his hero Ernest Hemingway.

The Love Actually star admits he was obsessed with the writer in his youth, and decided to run away to the French capital to write a novel.

Nighy made it to Paris but ended up begging on streets and being offered a job in a sex club before he gave up and returned to his parents.

The actor tells Britain's The Sun, "My hero was Ernest Hemingway and I was obsessed with trying to copy him. I knew he'd been a reporter on the Toronto Star as a young man and that he'd been to Paris to write a novel, so I told the bloke (man) at the youth employment office that I wanted to do the same thing... He got me a job (on a magazine)... but I ran away to Paris from our home... I threw a suitcase out of the window and followed it. I left a letter... It was the most pompous piece of bulls**t you've ever read...

"So I went to Paris to write the great English novel and ended up not writing a word. I begged on the streets and was soon offered a job at a place called Madame Cuckoos, where it was explained that women of a certain age would pay us young men for sex. I never did it... So I came back to mum and dad's house in disgrace."