Hugh Laurie, the actor of House, admitted to feeling like a fraud despite earning $700,000 per episode in the show’s last season.
Laurie confessed that his “dad would have hated” the shortcut he chose to take, regretting that he played “a fake version” of a doctor rather than becoming a genuine one, as his father desired. Keep reading to hear more about Laurie’s decision to become an actor rather than a doctor. Dr. William (Ran) Laurie had high hopes for his youngest son, Hugh Laurie, who was born in June 1959.
Laurie was following in his father’s footsteps, a physician who had previously won a 1948 Olympic gold medal in coxless pairs rowing and graduated from a University of Cambridge college. Laurie, who was born in the United Kingdom, was a rower at the same college as his father and intended to prepare for the Olympics before attending medical school.
But then the young man discovered a theatrical group, a sketch comedy team known as the Cambridge Footlights, where he met Emma Thompson from The Remains of the Day and his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry from the 1997 film Wilde.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the now-64-year-old actor acted in a number of television productions, including the BBC sitcom Blackadder, in which he costarred with Fry.
He also appeared in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility alongside Thompson, with whom he had previously been romantically connected, Disney’s live-action picture 101 Dalmatians (1996), and an episode of Friends. In 2004, he was given the role of a doctor in the new TV series House, an eight-season medical drama.
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Laurie ditched his characteristic British accent in his Golden Globe-winning portrayal as Dr. Gregory House, brilliantly portraying the egotistical genius who led a teaching hospital in New Jersey.
During the show’s run, Laurie became Hollywood’s most beloved doctor, with a tremendous global following. However, becoming a celebrity presents its own set of obstacles.
“I had some pretty bleak times, dark days when it seemed like there was no escape,” Laurie told Radio periods in 2013 (via Daily Mail). “And, having a strong Presbyterian work ethic, I was resolved to never be late or miss a single day of filming. You wouldn’t catch me calling in to say, “I think I might be coming down with the flu.”
But there were occasions when I thought, “How brilliant would it be if I had an accident on my way to the studio and won a couple of days off to recover?” The couple of days off did not arrive until 2012, with the last season of House.
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Aurie began making his rounds again, appearing on television series such as Veep and the 2015 science fiction picture Tomorrowland, which stars George Clooney, another well-known TV doctor.
In 2016, the Maybe Baby star was cast as Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, in the television series Chance.
As a gambler, my impulse is to leave the table after even a little victory… Yet I find myself returning, lured to a beautiful project that was simply tempting,” Laurie told the Los Angeles Daily News in 2016. When comparing his role as Dr. House to the doctor in Chance, which was canceled after two seasons in 2017, he says, “The characters are massively different.” Their practices differ. Their outlook on life is different.
Despite his enormous reputation in Hollywood, the actor of 2018’s Holmes & Watson can’t escape the idea that by not becoming a medical doctor, he failed his father, who died of Parkinson’s disease in 1998.
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“My father was a doctor.” And if it’s true that most guys are attempting to emulate their fathers and failing, it felt fitting that I ended up playing a phony version of a doctor,” said Laurie, who previously portrayed a doctor in the 2005 film The Big Empty.
“My father held great expectations for me to pursue a career in medicine.” The speaker expresses a desire to become a doctor and admits to having doctor fantasies. We live in a world of shortcuts, don’t we? And I took them. Dad would have despised that.”
Calling himself a “cop-out,” the Blackadder actor adds, “Seriously, this is a source of great guilt for me.”
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