Even though House’s most renowned doctor made $700,000 an episode in its last season, Hugh Laurie felt like a phony.
Laurie regretted playing “a fake version” of a doctor instead of becoming one like his father desired, saying his “dad would have hated” his shortcut.
Read on to see why Laurie chose acting over medicine.
Dr. William (Ran) Laurie had high hopes for his youngest son, Hugh Laurie, born in June 1959.
Laurie, a junior, followed his father, a physician and 1948 Olympic gold champion in coxless pairs rowing and Cambridge college graduate.
At the same college as his father, British-born Laurie rowed and planned to train for the Olympics and then go to medical school.
However, the young guy discovered a play club, the Cambridge Footlights, where he met Emma Thompson from The Remains of the Day and Stephen Fry from Wilde.
Laurie’s fate was sealed
The 64-year-old actor co-starred with Fry in various 1980s and 1990s TV programs, including Blackadder.
He also appeared in Sense and Sensibility (1995) alongside Thompson, with whom he was previously involved, 101 Dalmatians (1996), and Friends.
In 2004, he was cast as a doctor in the eight-season medical drama House.
Laurie eliminated his British accent to play Dr. Gregory House, a narcissistic genius who ran a New Jersey teaching hospital, in his Golden Globe-winning role.
Laurie became Hollywood’s most popular doctor and had a global following during the show. However, famous life is difficult.
I experienced some fairly gloomy times, dark days when it looked like there was no escape,” Laurie told Radio Times in 2013 (via Daily Mail). “With a Presbyterian work ethic, I was determined to never be late or miss a filming day. I would never call to say, ‘I think I may be coming down with the flu’. But sometimes I thought, ‘If I were merely to have an accident on the way to the studio and win a couple of days off to recover, how brilliant would that be?’”
With the final season of House in 2012, the two days off came.
Laurie returned to acting in Veep and Tomorrowland, starring George Clooney, another famous TV doctor.
Simply irresistible
In 2016, the Maybe Baby star reprised his role as Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, in Chance.
“As a gambler, I tend to leave after a small win…I keep coming back, pulled by a fantastic project that was irresistible,” Laurie told the LA Daily News in 2016. He says, “The characters are massively different” between Dr. House and Chance, which was canceled after two seasons in 2017. They do things differently. Their life outlook is different.”
False version
Despite his Hollywood stardom, the 2018 Holmes & Watson star feels he failed his father, who died of Parkinson’s disease in 1998, by not becoming a doctor.
“My father was a doctor. If most men are trying to be like their fathers and failing, it felt fair that I ended up becoming a fake doctor,” said Laurie, who played a doctor in The Big Empty in 2005.
“My father hoped I would study medicine.” He maintains his desire to become a doctor and still harbors doctor dreams. We live in a shortcut world, right? So I took them. Dad would have despised that.”
The Blackadder actor calls himself a “cop out,” adding, “Seriously, this is a source of great guilt to me.”
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