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James Hugh
Callum Laurie OBE (born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, comedian and writer
known as Hugh Laurie. Laurie is best known in the UK 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.
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. In 2005, he was nominated for an Emmy
Award for his work in House.
****
Birth name
James Hugh Callum Laurie
Born June 11,
1959 (age 47)
Oxford,
Oxfordshire, England
Height 6 ft.
2½ in. (1.89 m)
Spouse(s) Jo
Green (1989–present)
Notable roles
Various in Blackadder
Various in A
Bit of Fry and Laurie
Bertie Wooster
in Jeeves and Wooster
Dr. Gregory
House on House
****
Biography
Early life and education
Laurie was
born in Oxford in 1959. His father, William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie,
won an Olympic gold medal in the Coxless pair at the 1948 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, taking part in the 1980
Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Cambridge lost that year by five feet. Laurie is
a member of the Leander Club.
Forced to
abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever, 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 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, 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.
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.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 &
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 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.
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 resident 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 U.S. 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 same 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
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 Actors Studio, where he also performed one
of his own written songs "Mystery" on the piano with vocal accompaniment. Since
he is trained in comedy, the song was also meant to be a comedy song.
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 28 October,
2006, Laurie hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live where he now famously, mostly to
Internet fans, dressed in drag in a sketch about a black man (Kenan Thompson)
with a broken leg who accuses his doctor of being crooked. Laurie played the
black 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.
Personal life
Hugh Laurie
married Jo Green, a theatre administrator, in June 1989. They live in north
London with their daughter, Rebecca (born 1992), and two sons, Bill and Charlie.
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 and harmonica. 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 (musical guest: Beck; special guest: Sacha Baron Cohen as
Borat).
Laurie was
awarded an OBE in the 2007 New Year Honours List for his services to drama [4].
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
Quotes
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, 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."
Trivia
During a guest
appearance on The Tonight Show on 16 November 2005, Laurie revealed that he once
tried hydrocodone (Vicodin) in order to get into character for his role as Dr.
House.
In the late
1990s, Laurie concluded he was clinically depressed, a diagnosis that was later
confirmed in analysis and treated successfully. Laurie first recognised the
extent of his depression when he realized the car race he was in neither excited
nor scared him.[7] His comedy partner Stephen Fry is similarly burdened, instead
with bi-polar disorder.
Laurie was
cast as The Daily Planet editor, Perry White, in the film Superman Returns by
director Bryan Singer, but was unable to play the role due to his prior
commitment to the second season of House. (The series is backed by Bryan
Singer's production company, Bad Hat Harry Productions.)
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]
Selected filmography
Stuart Little
3: Call of the Wild (2006) - Mr Frederick Little (voice)
House
(2004–present) - Dr. Gregory House
Flight of the
Phoenix (2004) - Ian
Stuart Little
2 (2002) - Mr Frederick Little
Life with Judy
Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001) - Vincente Minnelli
Chica de Río
(2001) - Raymond
Maybe Baby
(2000) - Sam Bell
Stuart Little
(1999) - Mr Fredrick Little
Blackadder:
Back & Forth (1999) - Viscount George Bufton-Tufton/Georgius
Cousin Bette
(1998) - Baron Hector Hulot
The Man in the
Iron Mask (1998) - Pierre, The King's Advisor
The Bill
(1998)
The Borrowers
(1997) - Police Officer Steady
Spiceworld
(1997) - Poirot
101 Dalmatians
(1996) - Jasper
Tracey Takes
On... (1996) - Timothy Bugge (Season 1)
Sense and
Sensibility (1995) - Mr Palmer
Peter's
Friends (1992) - Roger Charleston
Jeeves and
Wooster (1990–1993) - Bertie Wooster
The New
Statesman (1989) - Waiter
Blackadder
Goes Forth (1989) - Lt the Honourable George Colhurst St Barleigh
A Bit of Fry
and Laurie (1989–1995) - writer/various characters
Blackadder the
Third (1987) - George, Prince of Wales, Prince Regent
Filthy Rich &
Catflap (1986) - N'Bend
Happy Families
(1985) - Jim
Blackadder II
(1985) - Simon Partridge (also known as Mr Ostrich & Farters Parters), Prince
Ludwig the Indestructible
The Young Ones
(1984) - Lord Monty
Alfresco
(1983–1984) - writer/various characters
References
-
^ Zap2it.com:
Raise Prescribed for 'House' Star
-
^ The First Post:
Why Hugh Laurie was overlooked at this years Emmys
-
^ Fry unable to
film House cameo with Laurie
-
^ "Rod and Zara
top New Year Honours", BBC, 29 December 2006.
-
^
hughlaurie.co.uk: Insight into Hugh
-
^ Interview on
Wogan, BBC1
-
^ BBC News
Magazine: Faces of the week
-
^
pgwodehousebooks.com: Wodehouse saved my life
****
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