Hugh Laurie as Gregory House

Gregory House of the FOX medical drama, House is played by Hugh Laurie. The son of a Marine Corps pilot, House understands various languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese and Hindi. During his father's travels, he was taken to various places, including Egypt, where he developed a fascination for archaeology and treasure-hunting. While they were in Japan, he found his calling after he saw a buraku doctor solve a case that no one else could handle. Despite his many family travels, he dislikes his father and would do anything to avoid spending the night out with his parents.

House was educated at Johns Hopkins University before he entered Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was soon expelled after his classmate, Phillip Weber reported that House was copying exam answers from him. He later entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he earned his title as a doctor in medicine. It was also in this university that he met his future boss, Lisa Cuddy, with whom he shared a one night stand with.

Upon taking a job at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital as the head of diagnosticians, House's co-workers notice his odd personality, unorthodox diagnostic approaches and radical therapeutic motives. A somewhat judgmental person, he often enjoys picking on people and mocking their weaknesses. He also has a knack for deciphering people's motives and histories from various aspects of their personality and appearance. Dr. James Wilson, House's colleague once said that House has a "Rubik's complex" because House always needs to solve the puzzle.

House dislikes interacting too much with his patients, thus waits as long as possible before he meets them. When he does encounter them, he seems to not pay attention, but later impresses them with his rapid and accurate diagnoses. His crankiness is mostly due to the pain on his leg from an infarction that was not treated immediately.



(Photo courtesy of FOX)