Hugh Laurie

September 25, 10:33 AMCelebrity Profile ExaminerAndy Williamson

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HUGH LAURIE

It’s not easy playing a curmudgeon -- a cantankerous, pill-popping, narcissist who also happens to be a medical genius.  It’s even harder to make such a character likable, much less lovable.  But british actor Hugh Laurie has done just that -- turning Dr. Gregory House into the most (ahem) lovable a**hole on TV.

James Hugh Calum Laurie was born on June 11th, 1959 in Oxford, England.  He is the youngest of four children born to W.G.R.M. “Ran” Laurie, a medical doctor who won a gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics as part of the British rowing team.  As if the sport were bred into him, Hugh, while attending Eton College, Britain's best-known preparatory school, took up rowing and soon became one of England’s best.  In 1977, Hugh became one half of the national junior champion coxed pair.  That same year, in the world junior championships held in Finland, Hugh and his teammate finished fourth in a worldwide competition.

A year later, Hugh enrolled at Cambridge University, where he intended to study archeology and anthropology, and also join the school’s prestigious rowing team.  However, during Hugh’s first year, he became ill with infectious mononucleosis and was forced to withdraw from all rowing competitions.  While he was recuperating, Hugh became involved in The Footlights Club -- an undergraduate comedy revue famous for being the starting point for many successful British comics.  By his last year at Cambridge, Hugh (who by this time had fell in love with performing), was elected as the club’s president.  Emma Thompson, soon to become a famous actress herself, was his vice president -- the pair had a brief romantic fling, but remain good friends to this day.  Emma also introduced Hugh to Stephen Fry, who was soon to become Hugh’s comedy partner.  The trio, along with the rest of the Footlighters (including Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton), took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1981 -- there they won the first Perrier Comedy Award, and were crowned “Pick of the Fringe,” which allowed them to tour England and Australia.

HUGH LAURIE

That coup led to the Footlighters first television sketch program, Alfresco, which in turn led Hugh to the famous Black Adder series with Rowan Atkinson, and the Jeeves & Wooster series with Fry.

By the 1990s, Hugh began appearing in feature films, starting with Peter’s Friends (1992), directed by Kenneth Branaugh.  More films followed, including Sense and Sensibility (1995 - which reunited him with Emma Thompson), 101 Dalmatians (1996), The Borrowers (1997), Spice World (1997), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Stuart Little (1999 -- including its two sequels), and Flight of the Phoenix (2004).

Though by the mid “aughties” Hugh was fairly well known around the world, not so much in the United States.  That changed in 2004 when he was signed to play the lead in a medical drama for FOX-TV.  Hugh would play Dr. Gregory House, an acerbic, Vicodin-addicted, common-courtesy-challenged physician whose skills at forensic science and deductive reasoning rival that of Sherlock Holmes.  With his pitch-perfect American accent, there are fans of the show to this day who do not realize that Hugh is in fact a limey bloke.  As of this writing, House has just begun its sixth season, and its vital signs are as strong as ever.  For this role, Hugh has been nominated for four Emmys, but has won none, and for four Golden Globes, and won two (2005, 2006).

Since 1989, Hugh has been married to theatre administrator Jo Green.  They have three children, Charles "Charlie" Archibald (born November 1988), William "Bill" Albert (born January 1991), and Rebecca Augusta (born September 1993).  The family resides in North London, with Hugh keeping a West Hollywood apartment while shooting House, and flying back home whenever possible.

HUGH LAURIE

Hugh is also an accomplished musician, playing the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica and saxophone -- he sings and plays keyboard for the Los Angeles charity rock group Band from TV.  Proving that he is indeed a renaissance man, in 1996 Hugh wrote and published his first novel, a thriller spoof entitled The Gun Seller.  The book was a bestseller and Hugh is said to be working on a screenplay adaptation.  A second novel, The Paper Soldier, was published in September 2009.

Your fans are legion, Hugh -- and we look forward to whatever you do next.

Hugh Laurie Quotes:

"I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he'd take it away."

“Boxing is fascinating.  It's good for the soul to be made to feel clumsy.  I swank around during the week thinking I'm a big cheese, but you don't feel like that when you're in the ring with a chap who knows what he's doing.  It's ritual humiliation.  I'm going to be slugged about and probably killed, but I love it and have to do something to keep fit.”

“I picked a reverence for medicine because I rather hero-worshiped my father, and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought.  I don't admire crystals and chewing willow bark and herbal remedies.”

Regarding his late father's reaction to his character Dr. Gregory House: “He would be absolutely appalled.  He was an endlessly polite, generous and soft-spoken man.  He was no pushover, but he would never hurt, shock or outrage people just for the hell of it.  At the same time, I hope he would be entertained and see that science and logic are like a religion to House.  He'd approve of that.”

HUGH LAURIE

Regarding what he misses about England: “The buildings and the cruelty.  They're very harsh people, the British: hard to impress, very tough on each other, but I rather like that.  It's not that the British are more honest -- you're just under no illusion with them.  L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery.  I think you can go a little bit crazy.  I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad.  It's just too damn sunny in every dimension -- weather-wise, socially and professionally.”

“I travel to work on my motorcycle, so it's jeans, boots and a brown Aero leather jacket that weighs as much as I do.  If it were black, it would seem like I've got a [Marlon Brando] idea going on, which I don't.”

On raising his daughter: “Girls are complicated.  The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.”

“I grew up with an impatience with the antiscientific.  So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern.  If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea.  But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil.  Maybe that's why I took up boxing.  It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi.”

Regarding performing with an American accent: “It's as if you're playing left-handed.  Or like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and you have a salmon.”

His speech after winning a Golden Globe for House M.D.: “I am absolutely speechless.  Seriously, I don't have a speech.  People are falling all over themselves to send you free shoes and free cuff links and colonic irrigations for two.  Nobody ever offers you a free acceptance speech.  There just seems to be a gap in the market.  I would love to be able to pull out a speech by Dolce & Gabbana.”

HUGH LAURIE

“Guilt I can do.  If [I have] any expertise at all, it's in the area of guilt.  I have a black belt in guilt.  If you ever want a guilt-off, the next time we meet let's see how we match up.  I'm pretty confident in that area.”

“Obviously you are in a very vulnerable position when you give an interview.  You are putting your testicles on a chopping board.  I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble.  I get anxious about everything.  I just can't stop thinking about things all the time.  And here's the really destructive part -- it's always retrospective.  I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.  I can't bear going through the same f**king dance of despair.”

“Celebrity is absolutely preposterous.  Entertainment seems to be inflating.  It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month.  Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.  The people I admire are those blokes in Fair Isle sweaters with pencils behind their ears who knew how to design mechanical things better than anybody else in the world.”

“Something in me says you shouldn't have toys.”

After receiving his 2009 Screen Actors Guild Award: “I actually had a 100 dollars on James Spader ... this is just not my night.”