A Bit More About Hugh Laurie
His family: His father, "Ran" Laurie, was a GP in
Oxford for
many years,
and also remained active in the rowing establishment,
serving as a Henley Steward, as a selector for the ARA, and as
president of Leander Club, among other activities. His mother,
Patricia, was a housewife and sometime writer whose essays about life
as a wife of a district commissioner in the Sudan were once published
by the London Times. He has two older sisters and an
older brother who is a barrister; Hugh is the youngest in the family by
six years. He married the former Jo Green in June 1989, and they live
in north London with their two sons and daughter.
How he became an actor: His early ambition was to join the Army or the Hong Kong police. He auditioned for Footlights on a whim when illness forced him to give up rowing during his first year at Cambridge. At the end of his three years, "a man with a Bentley and a long cigar...turned up from London and said, 'Do you want to do this [acting] for a living?' I didn't have a great stack of options at the time, so I decided to give it a go."(Desert Island Discs)
His height: Six feet, two and a half inches.
His hobbies: Music and motorcycling. His love affair
with motorcycles dates back to a moped his
father gave
him when he was 18; he has owned at least ten machines since. This
passion will come as no surprise to those who've read The Gun
Seller!
More recently, Hugh has taken up boxing to stay in shape while in Los Angeles to film House.
Hugh describes himself as a "frustrated musician," and told an interviewer that it's the one place where he can really lose himself: "I can sit at my piano for what seems like five minutes, but when I look at the clock it's three in the morning." (Daily Mail, Dec. 7, 1996) He told Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs (May 1996) that he "trifle(s) with piano, guitar, and a few other things;" he has also composed and recorded numerous original songs. These talents are on display in Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry & Laurie.
Hugh also played keyboards in a
soul/R&B band with Lenny Henry and Ben Elton's wife Sophie. (Adrian Edmonson of Young Ones fame was an original member.)
Adrian Sington in March 1996 Tatler
described the band thus: "So imagine my astonishment when I saw him
recently at the Limelight, looking much like Jesus and playing an
electronic keyboard, Tim Rice style. Laurie was with Lenny Henry's
funky band at the brilliant thrash given by Peter Bennet-Jones....With
his aptly-named band Poor White Trash, Lenny had the whole place
bouncing..."
Poor White Trash backed up Lenny on the Comic Relief broadcast in March 1997. The band further raised its profile by playing two dates at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1997, to enthusiastic crowds.
Here's how bandleader
Lenny Henry described Poor White Trash in a beeb.com chat in 1998:
"I'm in a band called Poor White Trash and The Little Big Horns, we do gigs for friends and for colleagues. On the rare occasion when we've done proper gigs it's been good but not quite the same so we tend to do them for our mates really. I'm the lead singer, Hugh Laurie's the keyboard player, we've got the Level 42 horn section, Then Jerico's programmer, The Spice Girl's drummer and two brilliant backing singers and we're funky and we're live and we sweat and people dance and go mad. But it's just a hobby. It's a bit late for me to become a pop star now...we're a hard working soul band and we do well."
More recently, Hugh told an interviewer that music is now a family affair for him:
Q: Who is that handsome actor, Hugh Laurie, on Fox's new House? A little insight, please.
A: He's a married Englishman who like to play New Orleans jazz till all hours with his kids, ages 11 to 16. With Laurie, 45, on guitar or piano, one son on sax, another on drums, and a daughter on clarinet, they're a regular Partridge Family. "Nauseating, isn't it?" Laurie jokes. "I've been trying to get my wife to sing, but that's not going to happen." -- USA Weekend, January 23, 2005
His favorite musician: Muddy Waters, "the artist who I have listened to most in my life, and who has meant the most to me."-Desert Island Discs, May 1996
Hugh's Desert Island Discs - The eight records Hugh would take with him to a desert island (from the May 12, 1996, edition of the BBC Radio Four program). See The Laurieate for a writeup of this interview.
"I Want to Be Loved", by Muddy Waters
CD Hard Again
CDSKY 32357
Bruch's Violin Concerto No.I
Pinchas Zuckerman with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Zubin Mehta
CD Brahms/Bruch Violin Concertos
RCA 09026 68046-2
"Tumbling Dice", by the Rolling Stones
CD Exiles on Main Street
VIRGIN CDV 2731
"(Love Is)The Tender Trap", by Frank Sinatra and Count Basie
CD Sinatra-Basie - An Historic Musical First
REPRISE 1008-2
"Hit Me with your Rhythm Stick", by Ian Dury and the Blockheads
CD Teenage Kicks - Various Artists
POLYGRAM 525 338-2/A&B
Theme Tune from The Sea Hawk, by Erich Korngold
CD Classic Film Scores
CLASS 7017
Me Minus You Equals Loneliness" by Dr. John (CD: The Ultimate Dr. John, Warner Special Products 9-27612-2)
"Brown Eyed Girl", by Van Morrison
CD The Best of Van Morrison
POLYDOR 841 970-2
Note: This is the record Hugh would pick if restricted to only one, because it reminds
him of his wife.
His favorite reading:Thrillers, such as Buchan's The
Thirty-Nine Steps, MacLean's The Golden Rendezvous
and LeCarr�'s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
"...thrillers are what I love and have always loved....I am just plain
moved by the beauty of a well-constructed thriller."- Books
Magazine, June/July 1996
The role he'd secretly like to play: the villain in a
James Bond film. "Menace is the most enjoyable thing for an actor to
try to create. You have a greater opportunity to ham it up than in any
other part." - Mail on Sunday Magazine, April 15, 1990
His secret ambition: "What I'd really love to do, my
biggest
fantasy, is having a jazz trio and playing in the Starlight Lounge of
provincial hotels. You see I say that and you're probably thinking,
'Oh, he's having me on here,' but that is actually what I'd really love
to do. Have a little dinner-jacketed jazz trio - the Hugh Laurie Five -
and there would be just three of us." - on the Simon Mayo radio show,
BBC Radio 1, March 1997
What he likes about comedy: "I very much fell into performing by accident, but I was excited by the physical pleasure of making a small group of people laugh and that is still largely why I do it."
What he doesn't like: "Being recognized in the supermarket is absolutely hellish and not why I went into the business." - both quotes from Peter's Friends press packet, 1992
His children's godfather: Stephen Fry - "And a jolly good
one, too." - Desert Island Discs
A bit of Thomas Lang? He once made a citizen's arrest - "I was about 18. I nabbed this chap on Kensington Church Street. He was running out of a leather-goods shop, loaded with stuff, and I brought him down to the pavement, held him there till the police arrived. You can't get much more creepy." - Independent on Sunday, May 12, 1991