Playing Dr. Gregory House on FOX’s hit series, House, has raised Hugh Laurie’s popularity in the United States.  However, the actor said that if he were to become friends with his famous character, he knows that the experience would be far from enjoyable.

“If I was House's friend, I would hate it.  How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road,” Laurie said to the Los Angeles Times early this month.

However, the actor also pointed out that it his character’s unpleasant personality and disregard for rules that makes the show all the more appealing.

“As a real person, he wouldn’t last a minute… But drama is about imperfection.  And we've moved away from the aspirational hero.  We got tired of it, it was dull… we don't always like morally good people, do we?”

Since House started airing on FOX in 2004, Laurie has captivated viewers with his convincing portrayal of the cranky diagnostician.  As the Head of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital’s Diagnostic Medicine Department, Dr. House is known for both his arrogance and insensitive manner in dealing with patients.  However, Laurie has successfully played out his character’s sense of humor, making Dr. House a more likable and tolerable character.

A prolific figure in the British entertainment industry, Hugh Laurie got the opportunity to gauge just how different things were in America when he began working on House.

"In Britain, the tradition involves creating a character that isn't like you.  In America, there's more imagining, how I would react if this thing happened to me,” he explained.  “So often one gets cast for who you are rather than who you can become."

This is not to say, however, that Laurie was cast in the role of Dr. House because creator David Shore and producer Paul Attanasio felt Laurie was greatly similar to the character.  On the contrary, Laurie couldn’t be more different.

"I don't talk like House or walk like him," he explained. "I certainly don't think like him. I don't like to think for more than 15 minutes at a stretch actually; I am a fragile flower."

Fragile, he is, compared to his character on the show, but when it comes to facing criticism that House is, at times, unrealistic, Laurie remains unfazed.

"You can't win," Hugh Laurie said.  "The audience either finds it unrealistic that the doctors always solve the case or wretched when they don't."

He added, "It's easy to be thrown, to think of them as something to be outwitted.  If you start to think of the audience as capricious, then they become something like a fat baby prince, unpleaseable.  But just like actors need to like their character, they need to find a way in to respect their audience."


-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Los Angeles Times
(Image Courtesy of Wire Image)