In comedy drama series Fortysomething, Hugh Laurie plays a man having a midlife crisis. Andrew Duncan meets the tortured soul.

On his parents

“I wouldn’t say [my father] was uptight, but upright and pathologically shy. I suppose I get a lot of my character from him - also my mother. Humility was the quality she admired above all. Comfort was the work of the devil. Dad wasn’t joyless. He had a strapping Presbyterian heartiness. My mother took it even further. She was a complicated personality and we had our good times and bad.”

On taking up acting

“The reason [I started acting] is not pleasing to the ear. It has to do with showing off to girls. I was so unconfident with them it was a relief to know that if I couldn’t interest them in any other way, I could at least make them laugh on stage. I thought maybe I’d catch someone’s eye.”

Early career plans

“I thought hard about becoming a doctor, but didn’t in the end. I wanted to go into the Hong Kong police. We’re all susceptible to images. For me it was probably The Third Man. I saw myself as Trevor Howard getting out of a Land Rover, being laconic and sucking on a pipe.”

On midlife crisis

“I had ambitions of opening the batting for England, climbing Kilimanjaro. I assumed there was plenty of time, but now the clocks have gone forward and I’m late, stuck because all my fantasies were based on the achievements of younger men like David Gower. I have no older role models. I don’t want to become home secretary or conduct the Philharmonic. Who would I be now as an actor, father, husband, writer? I don’t know. And that’s tragic. This realisation should have happened when I was 35, but being rather dim I didn’t perceive it until six months ago.”

On the differences between US and UK TV

“I’d like to play a clever person, but there are few opportunities in this country. British drama is about stupidity. My theory is our writers are motivated by revenge on cruel teachers and playground bullies who made their lives miserable. Americans write about those they admire - The West Wing is about characters who are angelic. Our first position would be that all politicians are on the make. I’m depressed by that view. It’s lazy and cowardly, and makes humour extemely cruel. I’d like to do more positive things. I’m worn out and bored by cynicism.”

On his unfulfilled ambitions

“My autumnal career will be playing in a hotel lobby somewhere. I know it’s not considered a rewarding gig in the world of professional music. I have a friend who plays five hours at a big London hotel for £25 and a meal. No one listens, but you have a skill, and there’s something romantic about the freedom to ply your trade anywhere in the world.”

January 18, 2006

As the star of US TV ratings smash House, new Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie is relishing his reinvention as a Hollywood star - but he misses his family in Britain

By Rick Fulton

HE is best known for playing bumbling buffoons, but this week Hugh Laurie crowned his transformation into telly’s heartthrob of the moment with a Golden Globe win.

And the 46-year old star of medical drama House admits he’s loving his new persona.

As a British comedy actor he is best known for his roles as upperclass twits in the Blackadder series, Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

But as Dr Gregory House he is the new Doctor Love - the most famous medic on American telly since George Clooney’s ER character Dr Ross.

Hugh laughed: “I’m rather enjoying the whole process of reinvention.

“I came to America as a faceless new person, and I’ve enjoyed that, I must say. “To be able to pretend to be something that I’m, frankly, not is very liberating and exciting - it’s a whole, sort of second, bite of the apple.”

We’re certainly getting a taste of a very different Hugh. Instead of playing stuttering, bumbling posh oafs, in’, House - which starts its second series, on Five tomorrow-the 6ft 2 in actor has grown some stubble and turned into a hunk with a bit of attitude. With an arrogant bedside manner, the maverick doctor, who specialises in infectious diseases, has become a huge hit.

With 18 million regular viewers, House is one of the top 10 shows in the States.

But the married father-of-three is quick to dispel any notions of him being a sex symbol.

He said: “Even my wife doesn’t think I’m sexy, it’s I a miracle we have children.”

With an Emmy nomination and now a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV series, Hugh has become an international star.

While he started out as a television actor in the Eighties and Nineties he enjoyed more recent success in Britain in movies including the Stuart Little films and 101 Dalmatians.

But now he’s gone full circle and become a television star all over again. This time across the pond.

But while he’s thrilled with his new-found fame, it does come at a cost.

He is finding it increasingly hard to be away from his wife Jo and their two sons and daughter - Charlie, 16, Bill, 14 and Rebecca, 12, who remain in London.

The huge success of House is making him seriously consider the prospect of relocating the family - although he’s not sure whether now would be a good time to uproot his children.

HE said: “It’s very hard, indeed. We’re just resigned to doing a lot of travelling. I get back when I can, and they come over here when they can. But it is tough.

“You know, if this had happened 10 years ago when my kids were small, it would have been very easy, maybe, to just take them out of school and put them in school here.

“But they’re teenagers, and they’ve got their own lives, and it’s tough on them to drag them out and go, ‘Come, build a new life with me, and I’ll see you one hour a week anyway.’

“So even when they come here, I don’t see them that much.”

Jo was with him when he received his Golden Globe and as well as thanking her during his acceptance speech he also warned his children that it wastimetogotobed.

The gong follows an Emmy nomination last year and a Television CriticsAssociation award for best performance in a drama.

It seems Laurie is in Los Angeles to stay-atleast for the foreseeable future - and with a reported £240,000-an-episode wage, he could easily build a home in Hollywood.

But with 15-hour working days, it seems Hugh knows that up rooting his family to America when he could see them only fleetingly isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. It’s perhaps these frustrations which have led to reports of Hugh being miserable and despondent on set - despite the acclaim and awards.

He is often to be found with his head in his hands, thinking he hadn’t played a scene right and could have done better.

He admits to crippling depressions and a destructive side which may well have contributed to him having an affair in 1997 with Audrey Cooke, the director of a film he was in, The Place Of Lions.

Recently he claimed House had cured the depression he’d suffered for three years and said: “I would cling to unhappiness because it a was known, familiar state.”

The youngest of four children, he was born in Oxford to church-going Scottish Presbyterian parents and brought up in the middle-class comfort made possible by his dad, who was a GP.

Laurie remarked: “I’m probably being paid more to become a fake version of my own father.”

While he enjoyed an easy relationship with his dad Ranold, who also won a gold medal for rowing in the 1948 Olympics, his relationship with his mother Patricia was more complex.

SHE had high expectations of her youngest child and was always disappointed.

Six years younger than his nearest sibling, the young Hugh would cheat in exams and was a fussy eater - even going on hunger strike for three days.

After his schooling at Eton, Laurie went to Cambridge and followed his dad into rowing. He was in the England youth team in 1977 and rowed for Cambridge in the 1980 Boat Race.

He also met Emma Thompson at Cambridge and joined the famous university theatre group, Footlights, where he was introduced to Stephen Fry, who would become his comedy partner.

They became the quintessentially English double act - most famously in Jeeves and Wooster where they brought P.G. Wodehouse’s characters to life. Laurie played Bertie Wooster, a dim-witted young gentleman who relied heavily on his clever butler, played by Fry.

Which makes Hugh’s current metamorphosis all the more surprising.

When no American actor could be found for the part of House, the makers cast the net wider.

Laurie, who was rehearsing for his part in Flight of the Phoenix in Namibia, made a video in his hotel bathroom, due to it apparently being the only room with enough light, and sent it to producer and director Bryan Singer.

His accent was so good Singer thought he was an American and cast him.

Dr House is a specialist in infectious diseases who has a non-existent bedside manner and a limp.

He walks with a cane and, due to pain, is dependent on prescription drugs. The trickiest part is acting one-handed.

Laurie said: I find it actually more constricting than acting with a limp.

“To be one-handed, to drink a cup of tea and put two sugars in, open a door and answer a telephone, becomes very time-consuming.

“Every scene for me is about where I’m going to park the cane. When I pick up this, where am I going to put the cane?”

While many think House is a truly awful human being, the actor thinks he has courageous qualities.

He said: “I really do think of the guy as a hero. He’s not polite. He’s not somebody you’d want to take home to meet your mother, necessarily.

“But he is in search of truth and that truth one day could save your life or the life of someone you love.

“I’m not saying I would want to be him or could be him, but I do think he’s heroic.”

He would have no problem with having such a doctor in real life.

He said: “If your life is hanging - or the life of someone you love is in the balance - of course you would withstand any amount of abuse to get the job done.”

The second series of House starts on Five tomorrow, 10pm.

‘I do think of the guy as a hero. He is not polite but is in search of truth that could save lives’

By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — Hugh Laurie rolls into the Petersen Automotive Museum on a rainy Saturday afternoon looking every inch the guy whose latest 16-hour workday ended at 2 a.m.

Stubble-strewn face. Weary eyes. Sloped shoulders.

No rest for the weary, eh, Hugh?

“Right.” Beat. “Which is precisely why I’m resenting every moment of being here right now.”

Whoa. How perfectly, wonderfully, deliciously House.

That’s Dr. Gregory House, part ogre and part genius, who saves lives with withering putdowns, a razor-sharp wit and the political correctness of Attila the Hun. He once sent a black colleague to snoop around a patient’s home for drugs, noting with an arched eyebrow, “There must be a reason for the stereotype, no?”

Actually, all this venom and victory over death has added up to a mushrooming hit for Fox, whose House returns after an American Idol-induced hiatus Tuesday (9 ET/PT). It also has brought laurels to Laurie, its previously unknown British star, unless you’re a big fan of Stuart Little 2 or Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder series. He recently won a drama Golden Globe over nominees such as Lost hunk Matthew Fox and 24 stalwart Kiefer Sutherland.

Over the course of 90 minutes, most of them spent ogling a range of motorcycles — his, and House’s, transport of choice — Laurie is opinionated yet polite, funny yet complex. He’s House Lite.

“I have my moments,” he says quietly. “Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.”

It’s that sort of self-analysis that allows Laurie to shape House into a fascinating train wreck of a doctor.

“House is one of the most provocative programs on right now, largely because of this acerbic lead character who walks around with a cloud over him,” says Ron Simon, curator at the Museum of Television and Radio, whose recent Paley Festival included a tribute to the show. House “is just one big mystery.”

Gruff has many prime-time antecedents. But where Ed Asner’s Lou Grant and Jack Klugman’s Quincy were cuddly grouches, House seems as huggable as a cactus.

Yet House and his prickly demeanor are red-hot. House is often a top-10 show that averages 14 million viewers a week. Whether it’s a thumb in the eye of the PC police or just a response to our war-weary times, it seems a relief to see someone vent their spleen, even as they deftly revive a heart.

“Everybody has idiots at their job, and those idiots are talked about when they leave the room. House just calls them idiots before they leave the room,” series creator David Shore says. “But it’s not about what House says; it’s about what he does. He’s heroic, but he doesn’t care what people think. And those blue eyes don’t hurt.”

Actually, they’re the show’s magnets, twin orbs that pull viewers through visually antiseptic scenes that, by and large, amount to a bunch of attractive folks in white coats hunkered down in hospital offices talking about such things as whether encephalopathic syndrome is linked to lithium toxicity.

What could easily have been a jargon-filled snoozefest is instead must-wince TV. Laurie is a mesmerizing misanthrope, yet he shrugs off praise.

“I’m just in a Ferrari of a role,” he says. “Mickey Rooney could win an award playing House.”

Freewheeling role

Laurie’s eyes alight on a vintage two-wheeler, ancestor to the beloved Triumph Bonneville that shuttles him to the Fox set weekdays at 5:30 a.m.

“Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive. When I ride through Beverly Hills in the early morning, and all the sprinklers have turned off, the scents that wash over me are just heavenly.

“Being House is like flying, too. You’re free of the gravity of what people think. Not caring, paradoxically, is likable. You get to see how the hero’s ends justify his means.”

That’s the Cambridge graduate talking. Laurie, 46, grew up in Oxford, the son of a doctor who won a gold medal in rowing at the 1948 Olympics. A student of archaeology, Laurie soon was drawn to acting. (Emma Thompson was among his first flames.) A series of successful turns on British television and his hit novel (The Gun Seller) won him fans “over there,” but stateside success arrived late and unexpectedly.

“I figured I was going to Vancouver for a two-week (pilot) shoot and we’d be done,” he says of his 2004 gamble. “Now I hear we’re on for next season. So …”

Laurie doesn’t seem thrilled. As he explains: “The quality of the work is wonderful, the quantity is horrendous.” More to the point, his wife and three teenagers (two boys, one girl) are back in England and have no plans to join Dad in sunny Southern California. He sees them on major holidays.

“It’s very tough. They could move here, but the kids would have to go to new schools, and my wife wouldn’t know anyone, and none of them would see me, anyway. I’m always on the set,” he says, shrugging.

Co-star Robert Sean Leonard, who plays a levelheaded Dr. Watson figure to Laurie’s limping Sherlock Holmes, marvels at his friend’s ability to stay sane.

“He’s got a family thousands of miles away, and he’s here pretending to be an American,” Leonard says. “This show is all he has. It’s lonely. Every time I see him, I don’t know how he does it.”

Part of it certainly is Laurie’s affection for House, the way the character lets him be a tornado in a world that usually asks that we whisper our discontent. But Laurie himself also isn’t shy about skewering his personal peeves, employing his driest Queen’s English to do the job. For example, he’s quite upset that Western medicine often gets a bad rap.

Medicine is in his blood

As a doctor’s son, “I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific,” he says. “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.”

Zing. A House line if there ever was one.

But as much as boxing (”I try not to let them hit me in the head, but it doesn’t always work”) and motorcycling are cathartic and escapist for this high-paid working stiff, both might vanish out of producers’ concern for the well-being of their star.

“No one cared that I did either when the show was starting up,” he says. “Now that it’s been renewed, I’m expecting a call.”

A bad-boy allure is another trait common to House and Laurie. While the former has been known to dabble in drugs (for medical purposes, of course, like the time he took LSD to rid himself of a self-induced migraine), the latter has been known to shock (female) colleagues with a rarely seen shaved-and-buff look.

“We were all at a party after the first season ended, and all of a sudden Hugh shows up,” says Jennifer Morrison, who plays Dr. Allison Cameron, a colleague who has had a crush on House. “He hops off his bike in this tight T-shirt, clean-shaven, with this gorgeous accent, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I forgot that was underneath there.’ “

Morrison is sure she understands House’s appeal: “He’s broken, as are all of us in some way, and yet at the end of the day, all he wants to do is save people.”

As a woman, she says the character packs a few extra shots to the libido, namely, “the fact that his talent is attractive, and his uncompromising nature is sexy.”

House’s former flame, played by Sela Ward, who recently wrapped her guest-star stint, is one of the few people who have managed to touch the good doctor’s heart.

“It’s not hard to do, because ultimately he’s got this little boy, wounded-bird quality that ‘women who love too much’ respond to,” says Ward, who says she would “love to come back” to the show. (Shore is eager, too, but says there are “currently no specific plans” for her return.) “Hugh is that same way. He’s a lot of complicated things wrapped into a charming man.”

Concern about his character

Laurie needs to leave soon. Another appointment looms.

He says he has enjoyed his first visit to the museum: The heavy metal on display took him away from his daily chores, and the crowds were easy, with the exception of one fan who, after snapping a photo, exclaimed, “You don’t sound like you do on TV.”

To which Laurie replied … well, nothing. Which in House terms is wild restraint.

“My character is so self-destructive that I worry for him,” he says, walking past a 1930s Rolls-Royce the size of small yacht. “Not just that he won’t find happiness, but that he might actually do physical harm to himself.”

Wait a second. Is this a future plot tip-off? A dark personal projection? But Laurie’s gone, off to rehearse with his jazz trio. He plays piano. He’s a big Ramsey Lewis fan.

A new TV-icon day has dawned: Stubble, swagger and unvarnished introspection never seemed so cool.

I received a few e-mails from viewers disappointed by some of Sunday’s Emmy Award winners.
Such complaints were minuscule compared with the wrath of viewers who discovered, before the awards, that Hugh Laurie, the star of Fox’s House, was not nominated as best dramatic- series actor.

His series was nominated (24 won). So why was Laurie, who essentially is the series, ignored?

Is it possible some nominating committee-members don’t own a TV?

It’s time that Laurie fans forget about the past and concentrate on the future - Tuesday, to be precise - when House returns for its third season.

Fans are in for a surprise regarding Dr. Gregory House, whose bedside manner often has offered all the charm of a Tony Soprano thug.

Viewers will recall last May’s cliffhanger, when House was shot in the gut by the husband of a former patient who had died while under House’s care.

It was obvious he would survive.

Even bewildered Emmy judges know Fox would not kill off the lead character in one of its most popular, critically acclaimed series.

But House has changed, at least temporarily.

Not showing up Tuesday night is the curmudgeonly, often nasty doctor who comes up with the brilliant diagnosis.

Gregory House is - brace yourself - humane.

And he doesn’t even carry his trademark cane, which he previously needed after he was crippled by a blood clot that keeps him in constant agony.

So how did he ditch the pain and the cane?

Sharp-eared House fans may recall that in the season finale, House, after being shot, requested a painkiller called ketamine.

The drug is used in treatment of such trauma cases, according to producers. People with chronic pain are put in a coma and treated with ketamine.

This causes the brain to “reboot” itself, allowing, on occasion, for the patient to be pain-free and capable of more physical movement.

Wait until you see Gregory House jogging around the park.

The first two episodes deal with how House reacts to living without his accustomed pain.

Such a change, of course, has a jaw-dropping effect on House’s co-workers as they team with him to help two patients with life-threatening problems.

While still cantankerous among co-workers, House has a different attitude with patients.

And he’s literally at a loss for words when a wife, grieving over her unconscious husband, thanks House for his concern.

House’s recovery from his injuries, his change in personality and future battle with painkillers will be explored throughout the season.

Later this fall House will clash with a cop (David Morse) who’s convinced House is stealing pills from the hospital and is in a dangerous cycle of self-overmedication.

Based on Tuesday’s episode, Laurie continues to shine as an actor. I wonder if Emmy folks will be watching.

Returning for its third season, “House” stars Hugh Laurie as Gregory House, an antisocial but gifted surgeon who specializes in solving baffling medical mysteries.

Among his foils: hospital administrator Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), who clashes with House over his medical duties even as she acknowledges his results. Edelstein recently talked to TV Week about her role and the new season:

In what ways has your character changed since the show began?

She’s a more complete human being than when we started. Cuddy has been at her job long enough that now she’s trying to look at the rest of her life, trying to have a child, and it will change her even more.

How would you describe the relationship between Cuddy and House?

They are naturally at odds with each other, but I don’t think he drives her crazy any more than she expects or wants to be driven. He is a pain in the [rear] to deal with but he is usually right, and that doesn’t go past her. I don’t know where their relationship is going. I love the chemistry between them, but I think it would be more interesting if it didn’t work out. I don’t have a vision for how they would knock down those walls that exist between them and the outside world. They have very different tasks. His is to solve all the cases, and hers is to see that he solves all the cases without bringing the hospital down.

Do you get caught up in the hospital’s life-or-death situations?

Well, we’re not doing “Marcus Welby.” It’s not about the good doctor who’s so warm and so caring. This guy House knows what he’s doing. He cares deeply and is committed to what he’s doing, but does he care because there’s a human being he’s helping, or because it’s a puzzle? I think House would say it’s about the puzzle, but I’m not sure that is the truth.

What’s the most fun for you about playing Cuddy?

Working with Hugh Laurie, who’s an incredible actor. And I like being on a show that is smart and funny and that I am not embarrassed at being on. It’s fun to have the same job for a few years, to develop a character. I enjoy my outfits, although my shoes aren’t the most pleasant thing to experience.

What can viewers expect in the new season?

There will be some new situations and turns, some good characters and a chance to dig deeper into the people you see every week.

(c) Washington Post 

One thing that makes Hugh Laurie’s weekly performance as the lead of Fox’s hit medical drama “House” so extraordinary is how different the two men are. The character Laurie plays, Dr. Gregory House, is a cane-dependent American physician with stubby hair growth and brusque – near-misanthropic – manner. Laurie is an athletic British actor who is usually clean-shaven and has a generously warm and humorous disposition. Indeed, about the only things the pair have in common is that they are both quite tall – probably ‘cause they share the same body – and they both love their motorcycles.

It may not be that odd to see a guy like Dr. House, who favors monster-truck events over a jaunt to the opera, tooling around on a hog. During the show’s second season, he impulsively bought himself a Honda motorcycle: a 2005 Honda CBR1000RR Repsol Replica. Despite his bad leg, the motorcycle has become a semi-regular part of House’s routine – he conveniently slides his cane into a slot along the side. In real life, Laurie prefers the company of a 2004 Triumph Bonneville – “an absolute classic,” he calls his machine, which is, in fact, his primary vehicle when he’s in Los Angeles for the long months of production.

Laurie’s love of two-wheel transportation began in his teen years. “I started riding a two-stroke moped at 14, messing about in a field,” he says. “I was immediately hooked.” Two years later, his father, a doctor himself, bought his son his first actual motorcycle: a Honda SS50. “That’s where I spent most of my formative falling-off years,” says Laurie. He doesn’t do much of that anymore, though he admits that “House’s” aren’t completely at ease with his daily mounting of his vehicle of choice.

“I think they’re OK about it,” Laurie says. “They might have been a little nervous to begin with, but I kept telling them that nobody has a greater interest in not falling off than I do.” And the prospect of such doesn’t faze the Golden Globe-winning actor, even after the high-profile incident involving Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and his ride last June.

“All accidents are upsetting, obviously,” says Laurie soberly. “I have sort of a superstition about saying this, but I have been riding a bike for 30 years – God, I can’t believe I’ve been doing anything for 30 years! And having said that, now you’re going to make me have an accident.”

Let the record show that Laurie made it safely home the night of this interview. And it also is clear that “House’s” producers weren’t skivved out enough about their star’s vehicular habit to not write it into the show. “It was the show’s idea to have House ride a Honda,” says the actor. “House is tight with money, and the implication is that he picked up that Honda cheap. If House were to end up on a Triumph, it’d have to be because he won it in a poker game.”

Riding a Triumph, as you may have guessed, is not the same as riding a Honda. “The Honda, that’s a sports bike,” explains Laurie. “That’s a sort of flat-out, as-fast-as-you-can-go, ‘Rider at the Gates of Dawn’ kind of a bike.” In short, it’s a speed demon, the kind of motorcycle a devil-may-care bloke such as House would drive. The Triumph, though, “is more sedate, and more practical. And I really don’t use it for entertainment. I use it to get to work. I use it to commute. I can get through traffic, and I can park it easily, and it’s cheap to run,” says House. “And everyone should ride a Triumph!”

Maybe everyone should ride a Triumph the way Laurie does when he travels from his local accommodations to the “House” set in Universal City, just outside of Hollywood. “Driving a motorcycle is like flying,” he says. “All your senses are alive. The greatest thing about riding in Los Angeles is the smell. When I go to work, it’s 6 o’clock in the morning. And what they do in the public parks and lawns is they turn the sprinklers on around 3 or 4 in the morning, I guess before it gets hot. So when you go to work at 6 o’clock in the morning, the smell of the trees and plants is just exquisite. My favorite time of day is riding through Los Angeles at the dawn. It’s just beautiful.”

There’s another advantage to riding a motorcycle in the early hours, Laurie has discovered: fewer fellow commuters. That’s not just because of the ease of travel, either. “Los Angeles drivers seem to have some political or religious objection to turning their head,” says Laurie, briefly sounding like House, albeit with a genteel British accent. “Their cervical vertebrae apparently fuse as soon as they get into a car.”

Copyright © CTW Features

Hugh Laurie Makes a House Call

The actor plays the ornery Dr. Gregory House on TV but says he respects physicians — especially his well-mannered doctor dad.
By Denise Mann

WebMD the Magazine — Feature Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD

One thing is sure: Hugh Laurie, the star of Fox’s hit medical drama House, does not suffer from “white coat hypertension,” the well-documented phenomenon in which blood pressure increases in the presence of a doctor. If anything, this six-foot-plus Golden Globe winner experiences the opposite reaction. “I find white coats rather saintly in some ways,” he says smoothly. In fact, “I have a reverence for the practice of medicine — I’m a great believer in Western medicine and all its wonders.”

Reverent? Dr. Gregory House? The ornery yet masterful infectious disease specialist, who never met a hospital rule he didn’t like to break? Make no mistake: Hugh Laurie and the good doctor — a character the actor has portrayed for the past three seasons and who has taught him a thing or two about the practice of medicine — are not one and the same, even if Laurie is supremely comfortable assuming his persona.

The son of a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, Laurie once considered becoming a doctor, as opposed to just playing one on TV. “There are regrets,” the 47-year-old admits. “I didn’t have the gift for science that perhaps I needed to be a doctor, and I certainly did not have the appetite for hard work that I knew was needed.”

Doctor’s Notes

So what, exactly, has Laurie learned during his tenure as House? “There are no clear and immediate answers to medical problems,” he answers. “The average lay patient assumes or hopes that as soon as he walks into a clinic, his condition will immediately become [clear] and the course of treatment will be immediately apparent.” Of course this isn’t the case in reel — or real — life. “A lot of times, doctors are groping with conflicting therapies and things that work — and don’t work — and they really have to improvise,” he muses.

But that’s not all he’s absorbed. “Eat more green vegetables,” the actor quips, brandishing a bit of House’s trademark sarcasm.

Talking American

Americans may be surprised to learn that Laurie, best known to his British fans as the comic star of such hits as A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, finds it difficult to speak with the doctor’s accent. “It is immensely hard to speak American,” he says. “I have to struggle and check myself every day, every scene, and every sentence. It’s almost as if I am speaking another language, and mentally, it’s very draining.”

Saying “coronary artery” is especially tricky, he tells WebMD. “My heart sinks every time I see a scene with those two words in it.”

Like House, Laurie is cynical about alternative medicine. “I am very skeptical, and that has got a lot to do with my reverence for my father and for his belief in the rational, logical, and empirical,” he says. “I don’t find herbs, acupuncture, and the mysteries of the East all that enticing … I’ve gone to an acupuncturist and put drops of herbal remedies in my bath and done all that sort of stuff,” he says, adding that “there is no clear benefit that I can see.”

Boorish Behavior?

While his father died before Laurie began working on House, “I think he would enjoy elements of it and would be appalled, in some ways, by House’s boorish behavior. My father was a gentle, well-mannered, and considerate man and would have gone to great lengths to make patients feel at ease and content. At the same time, he would admire Dr. House’s ruthless pursuit of the correct diagnosis.”

Would Laurie be happy under House’s care? “It would depend on the severity of the complaint,” he says. “For an ingrown toenail, I wouldn’t see House. But for a life-threatening condition, I’d want the best.”

And he’s not alone. A recent TV Guide poll showed that 36% of respondents named House as the television doctor they would most want by their gurney in an emergency.

House’s fictitious patients, however, don’t always have the kindest words to say about him. Part of the maverick doctor’s cantankerous nature is because his leg is in constant pain. As House, Laurie walks with a limp, carries a cane, and has developed an addiction to painkillers.

Depending on whom you ask, the actor does share some personality traits with his television character. “A couple of people close to me think that I can be acerbic and impatient at times, but I think of myself as a little ray of sunshine,” he says, deadpan.

Jekyll and House

Katie Jacobs, the Los Angeles-based executive producer of House, sees some similarities and some differences between Laurie and his television alter ego.

“He is incredibly smart and quick and funny the way that House is,” she says.

Laurie, however, is very polite. “House has no censor, and Hugh has a censor to the nth degree. But, like House, he really does know very quickly who is not doing their job right and how we can be doing it better.”

Also like House, Laurie is relentless. “He drives himself and wants to get everything right, and House is similar in that even if a patient is dead, he still needs to figure out the diagnosis and put the puzzle together.”

“I certainly don’t have his psychopathic disregard for social niceties,” Laurie says with a laugh. “If anything, I’m rather oppressed by social niceties and go to great lengths to fit in and say the right thing.”

An Apple a Day

Working 15 to 16 hours a day leaves little time for anything else. “I go to work early, get back late at night, and watch an episode of Law & Order,” he says of his typical day.

Factor in a few transcontinental flights from Los Angeles to visit his wife of 17 years, Jo Green, and their three children in London, and the result is one exhausted actor. “The trip seems to get longer,” he says. “I used to look forward to a couple of movies; now as soon as I get on the plane I get impatient. It is a feral distance.”

He does manage to carve out time to work out. Recently Laurie has taken up boxing and spars with — or gets pummeled by — an instructor once or twice a week. “It’s good for the soul,” Laurie says.

It’s also good for the heart, says Lewis G. Maharam, MD, a New York City-based sports medicine expert. “Boxing trains the heart [a muscle] and the body to become more efficient and toned.”

Low Boredom Threshold

For a while, Laurie was also an avid jogger. “It’s incredibly tedious,” he says. “I know it has benefits, and feel bad when I don’t do it, but I don’t feel that great when I do it!”

In addition to being a physician, Laurie’s father won an Olympic medal for rowing in 1948. Laurie did follow in his dad’s footsteps for a while. “I never found it to be that pleasant an occupation unless you’re competing at the highest possible level,” he says. “It’s all or nothing.” He rowed while attending Eton, was a member of the England Youth Team in 1977, and competed in several prestigious races.

Being the son of an outstanding oarsman, “there was pressure, but it was self-imposed,” he says. “[My father] certainly never pushed me toward it or goaded me to competitiveness. He was good at [rowing], and I wanted to emulate him in all sorts of ways. Of course I failed him in all sorts of ways — athleticism being one of them.”

Laurie tries to instill a love of sport in his own sons, Charlie and Bill, and his daughter, Rebecca. “I try and console my children when they have not been successful, and I am thrilled when they are,” he says. “They have no competitive ethos in them.” Laurie is, however, a vocal supporter from the sidelines when his son is playing rugby. “But I have never gotten to a point where I have threatened a referee.”

A motorcycle enthusiast, Laurie says he’s “been riding with my kids on the grass since they were young. Motorcycling is a delight, and if they ever do it on the road, I would obviously want them to have as much experience as possible.”

Easy to Quit

There are a few of his habits he does not want his offspring to emulate — like smoking. “I keep meaning to stop,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”

The problem? Quitting is too easy. “I found stopping to be not that hard, which made it hard,” he says. Offering up a House-like rationale, Laurie adds, “Quitting is not so bad, so I can do it anytime and there is less incentive to stick with it.”

It’s more than likely a colleague would call House on this, saying, “I think your argument is specious.” And House, with his trademark charm, would no doubt reply: “Yeah? Well, I think your tie is ugly.”

`

s House hits Dubai, Hugh Laurie talks to Time Out about his unexpected role, prescription drugs and the embarrassment his American accent is going to cause…

The terribly British Hugh Laurie may be better known on home soil for his eccentric aristocratic small screen acts (playing a bumbling idiot in Blackadder and a plummy-voiced clown in the PG Wodehouse-based series Jeeves and Wooster), but the 47 year-old has recreated himself in recent years with a metamorphosis that Madonna would be proud of. For his latest role as the eponymous Doctor Gregory House in the medical drama House, he’s ditched the public schoolboy caricature and has developed an impeccable American drawl, an impressive tan, and an IQ to rival Stephen Hawking – winning him some rave reviews and an entirely new fan base along the way.

‘I have played stupid people. I don’t know if it’s something about my face. I appear to be well suited to play stupid people and it is a difference in style between British TV and American TV,’ Hugh Laurie splutters in the upper class English accent he has become famous for. ‘American writers tend to write about clever people. That’s just what they do. They write about people they admire. In Britain, we tend to write about people we don’t admire. In fact, most British writers write out of revenge,’ he says – and having penned more than a few comedy series himself, we can only trust his theory. ‘As a character, House has got his stupid moments too though,’ he says, eventually getting to the point. ‘There’s a pretty strong adolescent streak in this character, which appeals to me greatly.’

The prickly character in question is an irreverently controversial infectious diseases specialist whose concept of bedside manner is totally absent. He’s offensive and arrogant and doesn’t give a damn what his patients or colleagues think of him, but in true TV fashion there’s a heart hidden somewhere under the white coat and the good doctor will do everything in his power to diagnose the exotic illnesses trying to kill his patients on a weekly basis. And as if that potent cocktail of winning formulas weren’t enough to get the viewers onside, he also walks with a limp and is addicted to the painkiller Vicodin.

‘It has been a terrific challenge to try and do the character justice and the whole issue of chronic pain and drug dependency. It was a big challenge,’ he emphasises before admitting to a spot of contentious method acting: ‘I took a single Vicodin just to know what that was like, and very pleasant it was, too. I think I lost half a million brain cells, and I didn’t have that many to start off with, but I did it once,’ he says.

It is clear that Laurie has developed a firm affection for his grouchy alter ego and he is quick to defend his character’s lack of social graces: ‘If my life was hanging by a thread, I would go to the good doctor rather than the kind doctor, definitely. Kindness is lovely, but if lives are at stake, then you want the best.’ It’s a sentiment the 18 million or so regular House viewers in the US would probably agree with. ‘It was brave to put such a coarse and unsympathetic character at the centre of a drama, but I think the audience feels the sort of freedom I do in playing the character,’ Laurie says. ‘Maybe TV is the best place for this guy. In real life, he’d be in jail or someone would have punched his lights out,’ he says, ‘but there’s an exhilaration in seeing someone say the unsayable.’

Laurie has been lauded for his latest role since the pilot took off in the States late 2004. The Washington Times, for example, described his performance as ‘perilously close to perfection’. With compliments mounting, Laurie seems content to ride on the crest of his wave of popularity: ‘I don’t think about the future,’ he quips. ‘I did it once in the late ’70s and it didn’t work out. I’m just enjoying what I’m doing. Honestly, I go from day to day expecting to be fired,’ he says with feigned modesty.

But the investment taken to make a success of this unlikely show hasn’t all been easy: ‘I have never worked this hard in my life,’ he readily admits. ‘I have to be in a dark, windowless studio for 18 hours a day. I don’t get out. So I get home; I eat spaghetti bolognese out of a plastic bucket and fall to sleep. That’s my life. The hardest thing is being away from my wife and children,’ he says sincerly before adding with sarcasm: ‘You do what you can with Jacuzzis and huge amounts of cocaine to fill in the gaps, but somehow it doesn’t work.’

With the second season currently making an even bigger impact in the US than the debut (currently showing in the UAE), it seems everyone is a fan. ‘I do anticipate big difficulties with British people hearing me playing an American,’ Laurie says. ‘It’s rather like British people getting very embarrassed of hearing their friends trying to speak French. You know, if your friends start speaking French in a shop, you have to walk outside, it’s just so embarrassing. And I think the same will happen for people watching me play an American.’ After several unfinished sentences he clarifies: ‘But I hope they get over it because there’s so much else going on in this show that is worth their attention.’

While the likes of Hugh Grant and Rupert Everett may have been satisfied to carve a stereotypical Hollywood career out of the awkwardly posh act, it is refreshingly satisfying to see that Hugh Laurie has not just attempted an unconventional transformation, but has flourished in the new role – which we think deserves the attention of not just the British expatriates in Dubai, but all of the city’s discerning residents.

 source: http://www.fyrne.com

Have you ever been in the midst of a taut thriller on the big or little screen and thought, Well I know this character won’t die because she’s played by Angelina Jolie (or Sandra Bullock or Sarah Michelle Gellar or Jennifer Garner)? Despite knowing nothing about the plot, the audience is immediately given clues the characters in the program or film are not. It’s similar to realizing that the seemingly underutilized super star will probably show up in the last scene as the villain. That’s why foreign and independent film can be so satisfying: Populated with actors you’ve never heard of or just plain “nobodies” allows you to really not have a clue as to which foreigner or indy malcontent did the crime, gets the girl, or goes stark raving mad.

Alas, back in Hollywood, the plots of some films and shows are obvious before the credits are done rolling (add one Ashley Judd, sprinkle in Morgan Freeman, drop in a dollop of Tony Goldwyn, and stir). And so, we watch our flat-screen TV sets or stretch out in a multiplex fully aware that the black guy is probably going to die first, the geeky best buddy and not the football-hero jerk will get the girl, and the bomb will ultimately be disarmed with exactly one second on the clock. It’s all so dreadfully predictable that every Hollywood project on the lot is hyped as chuck full of “twists and turns” and “wait until the last five minutes” in the hope that we will be tricked into watching just one more spin off of a spin off of an old idea (it’s “24″ meets Tom Clancy meets Harrison Ford!). Of course, we usually do just that, and then we complain that this year sucked for movies or there’s never anything to watch on any of my 503 channels. It is exactly why I thought the Fox’s hit drama “House” could never work.

Drawing inspiration from The New York Times Magazine’s column “Diagnosis,” “House,” which just concluded its third season, is almost absurdly formulaic. In each episode, a team of very smart doctors are handed a patient presenting a series of odd and possibly unrelated symptoms. Over the course of an hour, we watch a few MRI scans, maybe a spinal tap or two. The doctors go through round upon round of trial and error–mostly error, leaving the patient hovering near death–until, finally, after some debate and banter, the correct diagnosis is reached and the patient is saved. On the rarest occasions, a patient dies so that the doctors can poignantly look inward at their own frailties and remember that they are merely very smart doctors and not gods. But despite minor inter-character subplots here and there, every episode of “House” features a medical mystery and, inevitably, the solution.

And so, just like all those inane sit-coms, righteous courtroom dramas, and so-called who-done-its of televisionland, “House” is stridently predictable–or, at least, the plot is. What is unpredictable about “House” is the eponymous Dr. House himself, the world’s leading infectious-disease diagnostician–who is also a motorcycle-riding Vicodin addict and all-around asshole whose ferocity is only surpassed by his acerbity. In fact, every word that passes through House’s lips is dripping with sarcasm. The effort the show’s writers must expend making sure the tenor of House’s dialogue is arch every moment he’s on screen is staggering. A few delicious House-isms:

“Loss of free will. I like it. Maybe we can get Thomas Aquinas in for a consult.”

“Arrogance has to be earned. Tell me what you’ve done to earn yours.”

“Sorry. I already met this month’s quota of useless tests for stubborn idiots.”

“OK, fine. I’ll father your child. But first you gotta write me a Vicodin prescription. Just so I can get through the foreplay.”

“I thought I’d get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual.”
Of course, the dialogue is meaningless without the brilliant Hugh Laurie (any “Blackadder” fans out there?), who has made House the most intricate, troubled, and anarchic character on television. He portrays House as nastily as possible; there is no silver lining to House, no moments of humanity to remind you he really is a nice guy after all. House is captivating because he’s incapable of feeling guilt, compassion, or interest for anyone but himself. He is not the wry curmudgeon with a heart of gold; he’s a manipulative narcissist who loathes patients, rules, and God. House relies on pills as much as his ubiquitous cane (recently featuring retro flame decals), the physical manifestation of his inner demons and flaws. Where Alec Baldwin’s impolitic network executive on “30 Rock” is a great cartoon, House is the real miserable, bitter, ornery thing. And somehow it’s all tremendously funny.

Last week, on its season finale, “House” dumped half the cast. Three of the six primary players on the show–House’s whole team–either quit or were fired. And so at the end, just like all those insipid programs that follow televisionland rules about the hero always surviving, House finds himself alone but bracing for a new season. No other character is so strong or so dominant; only House is essential. Losing House is as unlikely as losing Buffy. The producers have intriguingly made the show as narcissistic as the main character.

But suddenly this attachment to the rules doesn’t bother me. With a predictable plot, mean-spirited protagonist, and incomprehensible medical jargon, “House” shouldn’t work. And yet, I find myself loving every minute of it. That’s because on “House,” while you certainly can’t rely on spontaneity from the story line, you can get it from the voice of the show. And, in the case of “House,” that is more than enough.

http://www.tnr.com