Hugh Laurie

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Hugh Laurie

Birth name James Hugh Calum Laurie
Born June 11, 1959
Flag of England Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
Spouse(s) Jo Green
Notable roles Various in Blackadder
Various in A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster
Dr Gregory House on House
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actor in a Television Drama Series
2006, 2007 House

James Hugh Calum Laurie OBE (born June 11, 1959) is a Golden Globe-winning English actor, comedian and writer. Laurie is best known in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe for his roles in Blackadder and for his long-running comedy collaboration with Stephen Fry which has included A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster (see Fry and Laurie for more detail). In the United States, he is best known for playing Dr Gregory House on House, MD.

In 2006 and 2007, Laurie won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama and won the 2007 SAG Award in the same category, all for his work in House, MD. In 2005, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role.

Contents

[edit] Early life and education

Laurie was born in Oxford in 1959. His father, William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, was a doctor and also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs at the 1948 London Games.

Laurie was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School, a prestigious preparatory school. He later went on to Eton and then to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Third-Class Honours degree in archaeology & anthropology.

Like his father, Laurie was a rower at school and university; in 1977, he was half of the junior coxed pair that won the English national title before representing England's Youth Team at the 1977 World Championships. Later, he also achieved a Blue taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Cambridge lost that year by five feet (1.5 m). Laurie is a member of the Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world.

Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever (mononucleosis), he joined the Cambridge Footlights, which has been the starting point for many successful British comedians. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship and is still good friends. She introduced him to his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry. Laurie, Fry and Thompson later parodied themselves as the University Challenge representatives of "Footlights College, Oxbridge" in "Bambi", an episode of The Young Ones, with the series' co-writer Ben Elton completing their team. In 1980–81, his final year at university, Laurie managed to find time alongside his rowing to be president of the Footlights, with Thompson as vice-president. They took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, written principally by Laurie and Fry, the cast also including Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won the first Perrier Comedy Award for comedy.

[edit] Career

The Perrier Award led to a West End transfer for The Cellar Tapes and a television version of the revue, broadcast in May 1982. It also resulted in Laurie, Fry and Thompson being selected along with Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane and Siobhan Redmond to write and appear in a new sketch comedy show for Granada Television, Alfresco, which ran for two series.

Hugh Laurie as Lieutenant George in Blackadder Goes Forth.
Hugh Laurie as Lieutenant George in Blackadder Goes Forth.

Laurie and Fry went on to work together on various projects throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among them were the Blackadder series, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis and starring Rowan Atkinson, with Laurie in various roles, but most notably Prince George and Lieutenant George; their BBC sketch comedy series, A Bit of Fry and Laurie; and Jeeves and Wooster. The latter was an adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's stories, in which Laurie played Jeeves' employer, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster. It was a role for which Laurie was considered particularly well suited, displaying his talent as a pianist and singer, alongside his celebrated 'posh' voice. He and Fry also worked together at various charity stage events, such as Hysteria! 1, 2 & 3 and Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Third Ball, Comic Relief TV shows and the variety show Fry and Laurie Host a Christmas Night with the Stars. They also collaborated on the film Peter's Friends. Laurie also appeared in an early 1980s British television commercial for Polaroid.

Laurie appeared in the music video for the 1992 single "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox, in full Regency-period costume as in Blackadder the Third (and opposite John Malkovich, similarly reprising Dangerous Liaisons). He also appears as a scientist in the video for "Experiment IV" by Kate Bush.

Laurie's later film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted by and starring Emma Thompson; the Disney live-action movie 101 Dalmatians (1996), where he played Jasper, one of the bumbling criminals hired to kidnap the puppies; Ben Elton's adaptation of his novel Inconceivable, Maybe Baby (2000); Girl From Rio; the 2004 remake of The Flight of the Phoenix; and the three Stuart Little films.

In 1996 Laurie's first novel, The Gun Seller, a spoof of the thriller genre, was published and became a best seller. He has since been working on the screenplay for a movie version and on a second novel, The Paper Soldier.

In 1998, Laurie had a brief guest-starring role on Friends in the episode "The One With Ross's Wedding, Part Two" as a man seated next to Rachel on a flight to London. With the popularity of House, his short scenes in the episode have become favourites of fans of both series, largely due to his comically disdainful use of the name 'Pheebs'.

Since 2002, Laurie began appearing in a range of British television dramas, guest-starring that year in two episodes of the first season of the spy thriller series Spooks on BBC One. In 2003, he starred in and also directed ITV's comedy-drama series Fortysomething (in one episode of which Stephen Fry appears). In 2001, he also voiced the character of a bar patron in the Family Guy episode "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea". Laurie was the character of Mr Wolf in the cartoon Preston Pig. He was also a panellist on the first episode of QI, alongside Fry as host. In 2004, Hugh Laurie guest-starred as a professor in charge of a space probe called Beagle, on The Lenny Henry Show.

Laurie as Dr Gregory House
Laurie as Dr Gregory House

Although Laurie has been a household name in Britain since the 1980s, he only really came to the attention of the American public in 2004, when he first starred as the acerbic attending physician Dr Gregory House in the popular FOX medical drama, House. For his portrayal, Laurie assumes an American accent. As the story goes, Laurie was in Namibia filming Flight of the Phoenix and recorded the audition tape for the show in the bathroom of the hotel ,the only place he could get enough light. His US accent was so convincing that the executive producer, Bryan Singer, who was unaware at the time that Laurie is British, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of compelling American actor he had been looking for. Laurie also adopts the voice between takes on the set of House, as well as during script read-throughs.

In July 2005, Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in House. Although he did not win, he did receive a Golden Globe in 2006 for his work on the series. Laurie has also been awarded a large increase in salary, from what was rumoured to be a mid-range five-figure sum to $300,000 per episode. His House contract was also extended for an additional year, allowing for at least a fourth season to be produced.[1] Laurie was not nominated for the 2006 Emmys, apparently to the "outrage" of Fox executives.[2] At the 2006 Primetime Emmy Awards, Laurie appeared in a scripted, pre-taped intro. He parodied his House character by rapidly diagnosing host Conan O'Brien and then proceeded to grope him as the latter stepped into one of Princeton-Plainboro Teaching Hospital's many clinic rooms asking for help to get to the Emmys on time. He would later go on to speak in French whilst presenting an award with Dame Helen Mirren on stage.

In July 2006, Laurie appeared on Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio, where he also performed one of his own songs, "Mystery", on the piano with vocal accompaniment.

It was recently announced that Hugh Laurie's comedy partner, Stephen Fry, would make a cameo appearance in House, but due to commitments in England, Fry is unable to do so for now.[3]

On October 28, 2006, Laurie hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live where he famously, mostly to internet fans, dressed in drag in a sketch about a man (Kenan Thompson) with a broken leg who accuses his doctor of being dishonest. Laurie played the man's wife.

On January 15, 2007, Hugh Laurie won a second Golden Globe for best actor in a drama for his portrayal of Gregory House in House.

On January 28, 2007 Hugh Laurie received the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama.

[edit] Personal life

Hugh Laurie married Jo Green, a theatre administrator, in June 1989. They live in north London with their daughter, Rebecca (born 1993), and two sons, Bill (born 1991) and Charlie (born 1988). Rebecca had a role in the film Wit as five-year-old Vivian Bearing. The starring role of the adult Vivian was played by Emma Thompson, a close friend of Laurie since their years at Cambridge.

He stated on BBC Radio 2 in an interview with Steve Wright in January 2006 that he is currently living in an apartment in West Hollywood while he is in the United States working on House.

Laurie is a skilled musician. He can play the piano, guitar, harmonica and saxophone. He has displayed his musical talents in episodes of several series, most notably A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, House and when he hosted Saturday Night Live on October 28th, 2006

Laurie was awarded an OBE in the 2007 New Year Honours List for his services to drama [4].

[edit] Awards

Emmy Awards

  • 2005 - Nominated - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Golden Globe Awards

  • 2006 - Winner - Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
  • 2007 - Winner - Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Satellite Awards

  • 2005 - Winner - Outstanding Actor in a Series, Drama
  • 2006 - Winner - Outstanding Actor in a Series, Drama

Screen Actors Guild Awards

  • 2006 - Nominated - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
  • 2007 - Winner - Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series

Television Critics Association

  • 2005 - Winner - Individual Achievement in Drama
  • 2006 - Winner - Individual Achievement in Drama
Preceded by
Ian McShane
for Deadwood		 Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
for House
2006, 2007		 Succeeded by
Incumbent

[edit] Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • Emma Thompson on Laurie: "He is very very lovable. He is one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel." [5]
  • On the birth of his second son during filming for Jeeves and Wooster: "We were halfway through a scene and the phone call came from the hospital — I didn't even know she was pregnant, it was such a shock — and I had to, we'd done all my bit, with the camera pointing my way, so I ran off to the hospital in my costume, which was very exciting, well, vaguely exciting, and poor old Stephen was left to do the rest of the scene just to thin air. Which was probably preferable, I dunno." Stephen: "Yes, thin air's a better actor." Hugh: "Yeah, not so wooden." [6]
  • Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review, on Laurie's book The Gun Seller: "As a writer, Mr. Laurie is smart, charming, warm, cool (if need be) and high-spirited [...] This is a genuinely witty and sophisticated entertainment."
  • On winning his second Golden Globe for House: "I'm speechless. I am, literally, without a speech."

[edit] Trivia

  • Admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone and during a guest appearance on The Tonight Show that he once tried hydrocodone (Vicodin) as part of his preparation for the role of Dr House.
  • Has struggled with severe clinical depression off and on over the course of his life, and continues to receive regular treatment from a psychotherapist. He stated in an interview that he first concluded he had a problem while on a movie set in 1996, when he realized that the car chase he was filming neither excited nor frightened him (he said that he felt, in fact, bored).[7]"Boredom," he commented in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, "is not an appropriate response to exploding cars."
  • Was cast as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the film Superman Returns but had to bow out of the project due to his involvement in House (incidentally, the series is produced by Bad Hat Harry Productions, which is owned by Superman Returns director Bryan Singer).
  • Laurie admires the writings of P.G. Wodehouse: he explained in a 27 May 1999 article in The Daily Telegraph how reading Wodehouse novels had saved his life.[8]
  • Is close friends with his House co-star Robert Sean Leonard.
  • Is a "Port" side sweep rower, rowing in 4 seat for the 1980 Boat Race

[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] Books

[edit] References

  1. ^ Zap2it.com: Raise Prescribed for 'House' Star
  2. ^ The First Post: Why Hugh Laurie was overlooked at this years Emmys
  3. ^ Fry unable to film House cameo with Laurie
  4. ^ "Rod and Zara top New Year Honours", BBC, 29 December 2006.
  5. ^ hughlaurie.co.uk: Insight into Hugh
  6. ^ Interview on Wogan, BBC1
  7. ^ BBC News Magazine: Faces of the week
  8. ^ pgwodehousebooks.com: Wodehouse saved my life

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Jan Ravens		 Footlights President
1980–1981		 Succeeded by
Tony Slattery
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