Jane Leeves, who plays an eccentric Mancunian careworker in the US sitcom Frasier, has become the highest-paid British actress in history. Leeves has signed a £20m contract for three new series as the semi-psychic physiotherapist Daphne Moon - earning more than triple the fees of Britain's highest-paid Hollywood actress, Catherine Zeta Jones.

Leeves, who began her television career darting across lawns in her garters on the Benny Hill show, will earn more than £275,000 for each half-hour Frasier show. This outstrips the salaries of performers such as Dame Judi Dench and Kate Winslet. Zeta Jones made around £6m last year including £700,000 from a non-speaking, Japanese shampoo commercial. Kate Winslet can command £2m a film, and Elizabeth Hurley earned £2m for her role in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

British actresses in other US television shows earn a pittance compared to Leeves. Alex Kingston is paid £16,000 an episode for the medical drama, ER. Helen Baxendale reportedly earned £15,000 an episode for her guest appearances in the US sitcom Friends.

Leeves, 40, receives royalties every time one of the 200 episodes of the award-winning Frasier show is syndicated. She works on the show for six months a year and runs a production company, Bristol Cities, with co-star Peri Gilpin who plays Roz. The company, whose rhyming slang-inspired title escapes many of its US clients, recently bought the rights to re-make the British comedy, the Vicar of Dibley, in the US.

Leeves said she started producing "to get English people to respect me". A British interviewer once asked her if she envied the earnings of Frasier's performing Jack Russell, Eddie. "Yes," she replied. "It sort of really irked [the cast] that he made it to the cover of Entertainment Weekly before any of us. There was his little face with his tongue hanging out."

Leeves, who puts on a Lancashire accent for the show, said her appeal lies in America's fondness for British eccentrics. "The differences between our humour aren't that great. The British tend to get a bit more toiletty and potty, and also we're more apt to make fun of ourselves than the Americans are, but we really do laugh at the same things."

Leeves grew up in East Grinstead, the daughter of an engineer and a nurse, and trained as a ballerina until she injured an ankle at 18. She became a Hill's Angel on the Benny Hill show, appearing as a maid who holds a tea tray with her skirt because she cannot find the oven gloves.

Leeves also appeared in Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the Morecambe and Wise show before buying a one-way ticket to Los Angeles at 21. She worked as a babysitter and jewellery-packer, taking acting classes with the then struggling Winona Ryder, Jim Carrey and Ellen DeGeneres.

After Leeves won a small part in the award-winning sitcom Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld persuaded Frasier's creator, David Angell, to write a role for her as the kooky northern English physiotherapist. Angell died on September 11, as a passenger on one of the hijacked American flights. But the sitcom will continue, with all lead actors signing contracts until 2004.

Now in its ninth season on the US channel NBC, Frasier was the first US TV show to win five consecutive Emmies in its first five years.

But women's groups are likely to ask why Leeves, an Emmy nominee, earns less than half that of her male co-stars. Last year, Kelsey Grammer, who plays the lead role of a pompous radio psychiatrist, signed an agreement making him the highest paid actor in television history on just over £1m an episode. David Hyde Pierce, who plays his neurotic younger brother, Niles, earns £700,000 a show.

This week, a survey of Britain's 100 highest paid women found US television work had boosted the fortunes of British actresses and presenters. Anne Robinson earned a total of £11m last year after her TV quiz show, the Weakest Link, transferred to the US. She is the third highest-earning woman in Britain. The British comedian, Tracey Ullman, is believed to be worth over £40m after a 17-year career in the US. She has her own TV show and has won seven Grammy awards.

In music, a US presence appears essential. Dido, the singer who rose to prominence after collaborating with the US rapper Eminem, earned £10m last year. Zeta Jones can now command £5m a film after moving to Hollywood.

Leeves made more last year than Dame Judi Dench, Kate Moss and the Duchess of York. She recently married Marshall Coben, a senior Paramount executive, who she met at a Frasier cast Christmas party. They live in Los Angeles with their daughter, Isabella, who was born early last year.