Hugh Laurie

At 64 years old, Hugh Laurie has this physical status:

James Hugh Calum Laurie (born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, producer, actor, comedian, and author. Laurie is perhaps best known for portraying the title character on the Fox medical drama series House (2004-2012), for which he received two Golden Globe Awards and nominations for numerous other awards.

He was named in Guinness World Records as the most watched male actor on television in 2011 and was one of the highest-paid actors in a television drama, earning £250,000 ($409,000) per episode of House.

He has appeared in other television shows as Richard Onslow Roper in the miniseries The Night Manager (2016–2019), for which he received his third Golden Globe Award and Senator Tom James in HBO's Veep (2012–2019), which earned his 10th Emmy Award nomination. Laurie's first name was recognized for his performance as one half of the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, as well as his mutual friend and comedian Stephen Fry, who met Emma Thompson while visiting Cambridge University, where Laurie was president of the Footlights.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the two groups collaborated on a variety of projects, including the sketch comedy film A Bit of Fry & Laurie and P. G. Wodehouse's interpretation Jeeves and Wooster.

Laurie's other roles during this time include the period comedy series Blackadder (in which Fry also appeared), 101 Dalmatians, The Borrowers, and Stuart Little. Let Them Talk (2011) and Didn't Rain (2013), both to favourable reviews, and authored the book The Gun Seller (1996). Laurie has received three Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actor Guild Awards, and he has been nominated for ten Primetime Emmy Awards, among his many accolades.

In 2016, he was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a celebrity.

In the 2007 New Year Honours, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), both for services to drama.

Early life

Hugh Calum Laurie was born in Oxford's Blackbird Leys neighborhood on June 11, 1959, the youngest of four children of Patricia (née Laid) and William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, a physician and Olympic gold medalist in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games. He has an older brother, Charles Alexander Lyon Mundell Laurie, and two older sisters, Susan and Janet. He had a tense relationship with his mother, whom he described as "Presbyterian by name." "I was annoyance to her," he later said. She didn't like me." His mother died of motor neuron disease in 1989, at the age of 73. Laurie suffered with the disease for two years and suffered with "painful, plodding paralysis" while being cared for by Laurie's father, who has described her as "the sweetest man in the entire world."

Laurie's parents, who were both of Scottish descent, attended St Columba's Presbyterian Church (now United Reformed Church) in Oxford. "Belief in God played no part" in his household, according to him, but "a particular attitude to life and the living of it did." "Pleasure was something that was treated with great suspicion," he said, "she was something that was regarded with increasing suspicion, but delight was something that... I was supposed to say that it had to be earned, but that didn't really work. It was something to this day, I mean, I carry it with me. Pleasure is a difficult thing; I don't know what you do with it; I don't know where to put it; and I'm not sure where to put it." "I don't believe in God," the narrator later stated, but I have this belief that if there were a God or fate of some sort looking down on us, that if he saw you taking something for granted."

Laurie was born in Oxford and attended the Dragon School from ages 7 to 13, later describing "I was, in truth, a horrible child." In French vocabulary tests, I did not much relate to things of a 'bookey' type. He went to Eton College, which he described as "the most private of private schools." He attended Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1978, which he describes as "a result of family history" since his father went there. Laurie recalls that his father, who was a highly successful rower at Cambridge, was "trying to follow [his] father's footsteps." He studied archaeology and anthropology, specialising in social anthropology, and graduated with third-class honors in 1981.

Laurie rowed at school and university, as did his father. He was a member of the junior coxed pair that won the British national championship before representing the United Kingdom's Youth Team in the 1977 Junior World Rowing Championships. Laurie and her rowing companion, J.S., were born in 1980. Palmer, runners-up in the Silver Goblets coxless pair for Eton Vikings rowing club. While competing in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, he earned a Blue. Cambridge lost by five feet this year. Laurie was training for up to eight hours a day and was on a track to become an Olympic rower during this period. He is a member of the Leander Club, one of the world's oldest rowing clubs, and he has been a member of the Hermes Club and Hawks' Club.

Personal life

On June 16, 1989 in London's Camden district, Laurie married theatre administrator Jo Green. Charlie, Bill, and Rebecca have three children. During a sketch titled "Special Squad," Laurie's older son Charlie appeared as baby William in A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Rebecca's daughter appeared in the film Wit as a five-year-old Vivian Bearing. Stephen Fry, Laurie's best friend and long-time comedy partner, was the best man at his wedding and is the godfather of his children.

He spoke to Inside the Actors Studio in 2006 about his struggles with acute clinical depression. He told host James Lipton that he first noticed he had a problem when driving in a charity demolition derby, but that seeing two cars collide and explode made him feel ill rather than afraid or frightened; he said, "boredom is not an appropriate response to exploding cars." He was seeing a psychotherapist on a regular basis as of 2006.

Laurie adores P. G. Wodehouse's writings, revealing in a Daily Telegraph article in May 1999 how reading Wodehouse books had saved his life. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he confirmed that he is an atheist. He is a huge motorcycle enthusiast and has two motorcycles, one in London and one at his Los Angeles home. Triumph Bonneville's self-proclaimed "feeble effort to fly the British flag" in the United States, his motorcycle in the United States is a Triumph Bonneville.

Laurie was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in June 2013, where he selected tracks from Joe Cocker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Randy Newman, Professor Longhair, Son House, Nina Simone, Lester Young–Buddy Rich Trio, and Van Morrison as his eight favorite albums. This was his second appearance on the show, having previously appeared on Muddy Waters, Max Bruch, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Ian Dury, and Van Morrison.

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Career

Laurie joined the Cambridge Footlights, a university dramatic club that has produced a number of well-known actors and comedians, after being compelled to abandon rowing due to a bout of glandular fever. Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic acquaintance, was a good friend; the two are still good friends. Stephen Fry, his upcoming comedian, was introduced to him. In "Bambi," an episode of The Young Ones, Laurie, Fry and Thompson co-authored their story, with series' co-writer Ben Elton leading the team.

Laurie was president of the Footlights in 1980–81, his final year at university, other than rowing, with Thompson as vice president. They brought their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, to Edinburgh Fringe Festival and received their first Perrier Comedy Award. The revue was written mainly by Laurie and Fry, and Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer, and Penny Dwyer appeared in the cast. The Perrier Award resulted in a West End transfer for The Cellar Tapes and a television version of the revue, which was broadcast in May 1982. Laurie, Fry and Thompson were chosen, along with Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane, and Siobhan Redmond, produced a new sketch comedy program for Granada Television, Alfresco, which aired for two seasons.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Fry and Laurie worked together on various projects. Among them was the Blackadder series, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, starring Rowan Atkinson, with Laurie in various roles, including Prince George and Lieutenant George. Other projects followed, one of which was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie; another venture was Jeeves and Wooster, a parody of P. G. Wodehouse's books, in which Laurie played Jeeves' boss, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster; and another was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie. He and Fry were involved in charity theatre productions, including Hysteria! The Secret Policeman's Third Ball, Comic Relief TV shows, and the variety show Fry and Laurie Host a Christmas Night with the Stars features actors Michael Jackson, 3,2 & 3. They worked on Peter's Friends (1992) again, and in 2010 they appeared together for a retrospective exhibition titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.

Laurie appeared in the Thames Television film Letters from a Bomber Pilot (1985), directed by David Hodgson. This was a serious acting role, with the film being based on Pilot Officer J.R.A.'s letters home. "Bob" Hodgson, a pilot in RAF Bomber Command who was killed in combat in 1943, was a pilot in RAF Bomber Command.

Laurie appeared in Kate Bush's 1986 single "Experiment IV" and the 1992 Annie Lennox single "Walking on Broken Glass" in British Regency period costume with John Malkovich. Laurie appeared in the Spice Girls' film Spice World (1997) and had a brief guest-starring role on Friends in "The One with Ross' Wedding" (1998).

Laurie's later film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), directed and starring Emma Thompson; and the Disney live action film 101 Dalmatians (1996), where he played Jasper, one of the bumbling criminals hired to kidnap the puppies; and Stuart Little, 2004's version of The Flight of the Phoenix.

Laurie has appeared in a number of British television dramas since 2002, most recently in two episodes of the spy thriller series Spooks on BBC One. He appeared in and also directed ITV's comedy-drama series fortysomething in 2003 (in one episode of which Stephen Fry appears). In the Family Guy episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea," he portrayed the character of a bar patron in 2001. In the animated Preston Pig series, Laurie portrayed Mr. Wolf. On the first episode of QI, he appeared as a panelist alongside Fry as the host. On The Lenny Henry Show in 2004, Laurie guest-starred as a professor in charge of a space probe named Beagle.

Laurie played Dr. Gregory House, an acerbic doctor specialising in diagnostic medicine, in the Fox medical drama House between 2004 and 2012. He assumed an American accent for his role. He was filming in Namibia on Flight of the Phoenix and filming his audition tape for the show in the hotel's bathroom, as it was the only place he could get enough light. Jacob Vargas was in charge of the audition video. Laurie's American accent was so convincing that executive producer Bryan Singer, who was unaware that Laurie was British, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of "compelling American actor" he had been looking for. Laurie used the accent between takes on the house of Commons and script read-throughs, as well as during script read-throughs, but he retained his native accent when directing the episode "Lockdown." He has also served as the programmer for the episode "The Clawfather."

Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005 for his work in House. Despite winning, he did receive a Golden Globe in both 2006 and 2007 for his efforts on the series and the Screen Actor Guild Award in 2007 and 2009. Laurie was also given a significant raise in salary from what was rumored to a mid-range five-figure sum to $350,000 per episode. Laurie was not chosen for the 2006 Emmys, evidently due to Fox executives' outrage, but he did a good job with a scripted, pre-taped introduction, in which he parodied his House appearance by quickly diagnosing host Conan O'Brien and then groping him as the latter requested his help in getting to the Emmys on time. When presenting an Emmy with Dame Helen Mirren, he would later go back to speak in French, and he has since been nominated in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

In Singer's film Superman Returns, Laurie was initially portrayed as Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, but he had to pull out of the campaign due to his commitment to the House. Laurie appeared on Inside the Actors Studio in July 2006, where he also performed "Mystery" himself on the piano. He appeared in drag in a sketch about a man (Kenan Thompson) with a fractured leg that accuses his doctor of dishonesty on Saturday Night Live, in which he appeared in drag. Laurie played the man's wife.

Laurie appeared on BBC Four's documentary Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out, filmed in honor of Fry's 50th birthday in August 2007. He appeared in Blackadder Rides Again in 2008 and appeared in Street Kings as Captain James Biggs, opposite Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker, and then as the eccentric Dr. Cockroach, PhD in DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens. For the second time on the Christmas show, he performed a medley of three-second Christmas songs to end his monologue. Laurie was a guest star on another Family Guy episode, "Business Guy," parodying Gregory House in 2009. During Homer and Marge's second honeymoon, Laurie guest appeared in The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror XXI" as Roger, a castaway who is planning a murder scheme on a ship.

Fox revealed on February 8, 2012, that season eight of House would be the last. Laurie was in talks to appear as the villain in RoboCop, a sequel to the original RoboCop film, on June 13, 2012. Laurie Parsons approved the proposal but it eventually fell through. Laurie appeared in The Oranges, a limited release. In the role of a father who has an affair with his neighbor's daughter, played by Leighton Meester, the New York Post found that he was "less-than-ideally cast." "He was particularly good," the Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, thought. Laurie took a three-year break from film and television work after the conclusion of House.

Laurie was in talks to be cast in the role of Blackbeard in the 2014 film Crossbones. However, John Malkovich took the spotlight. After showrunner Armando Iannucci learned he was a fan of the series, he returned to television as Tom James in 2015. Laurie did not return to the show until the final season in 2019. In Brad Bird's 2015 film Tomorrowland, he appeared in the villain David Nix the same year.

In the BBC One mini-series The Night Manager, Laurie Onslow Roper played Richard Onslow Roper. The series began filming in spring 2015 and aired on the BBC for the first time. He was nominated for two Emmy Awards for his role on the miniseries, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries, or Television Film.

Dr. Eldon Chance, a San Francisco-based forensic neuropsychiatrist, appeared in the Hulu thriller series Chance, which lasted for two seasons from 2016 to 2017. Laurie was only marginally involved in the critically acclaimed film Holmes & Watson in 2018.

Laurie appeared in Armando Iannucci's film The Personal History of David Copperfield, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. It was also revealed that he would appear with Iannucci on the forthcoming space comedy Avenue 5 for HBO this year. Laurie Reminiscing his role as Captain Ryan appeared on Avenue 5 on October 10, 2022.

Laurie began taking piano lessons at the age of six. He plays the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica, and saxophone. He has demonstrated his musical abilities throughout his career, including on A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves, and Wooster House, and even as the host of Saturday Night Live in October 2006. He is a vocalist and keyboard player for the Los Angeles charity rock band Band From TV.

In addition, Laurie performed piano as a special guest on Meat Loaf's 2010 album Hang Cool Teddy Bear, following Meat Loaf's appearance in the House episode "Simple Explanation." In the film Maybe Baby, Laurie co-wrote and performed the comedic blues song "Sperm Test in the Morning."

Laurie performed several classic rock 'n roll instruments, including Gibson Flying V and Les Paul guitars on House. His character has a Hammond B-3 organ in his house, and he performed the introduction to Procol Harum's classic "Whiter Shade of Pale" on one episode.

Laurie will debut a blues album on July 26, 2010 after signing a Warner Bros. Records deal. Let them Talk, a French and German album, was released in France on April 18th 2011 and in Germany on May 29th. The album features collaborations from well-known artists such as Tom Jones, Irma Thomas, and Dr. John.

Laurie and a jazz quintet closed the 2011 Cheltenham Jazz Festival to much acclaim on May 1. He grew up for the music of New Orleans and performing jazz, from his album Let Them Talk to live venues in the city itself. He was a fan of PBS Great Performances Let them talk, as well as about New Orleans jazz, which was broadcast on September 30.

On May 6, 2013, Donn't It Rain Rain, his second album, Didn't It Rain, was released in the United Kingdom. He and his band appeared at the RMS Queen Mary in the same year. This performance was shot on film and later released as Live on the Queen Mary on DVD and Blu-ray.

The Gun Seller, Laurie's first book, an intricate thriller laced with Wodehouseian humour, was published in 1996 and became a best-seller. He has been working on a film version of the screenplay. The Paper Soldier, his second book, was scheduled for September 2009, but it has yet to appear.

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