He played misery so well, he couldn't tell where the character ended and he began

Humanity

 · 

Follow

Posted by 

Mandi Shre

 

16h

He played misery so well, he couldn't tell where the character ended and he began.

He was paid millions to play a miserable man — and couldn't tell where the character ended and he began.

When the creators of House M.D. were casting their lead in 2004, they wanted someone quintessentially American. British actors, they believed, just couldn't pull off the accent convincingly enough. They weren't even considering anyone from overseas.

But thousands of miles away in Namibia, Hugh Laurie was filming a movie and heard about the role. He didn't fly to Los Angeles. He didn't walk into a polished audition room. Instead, he went into his hotel bathroom — the only room with enough light — propped up a camera, grabbed an umbrella to use as a cane, and recorded himself performing two scenes.

He sent the tape in, apologizing for how rough it looked. Executive producer Bryan Singer watched it and was blown away by the performance of this, as he put it, brilliant "American actor." He had no idea Laurie was British.

That tape changed everything.

But the show didn't explode overnight. The pilot drew about seven million viewers — respectable, not earth-shattering. It was over the following seasons that House became a global phenomenon, eventually reaching over 80 million viewers worldwide and making Laurie the most-watched leading man on television according to Guinness World Records.

What nobody saw was the weight of carrying it all.

For eight seasons, Laurie woke at five in the morning for sixteen-hour days on set. He was in nearly every scene. And because the show filmed in Los Angeles while his wife and three children remained in London, he spent nine months of every year six thousand miles from home.

The isolation crept in slowly. Laurie had struggled with depression since his youth — he'd first sought help for it back in 1996, long before House existed. But the pressure of the show deepened everything. He later admitted he had "very, very black days" on set and that the situation often felt overwhelming.

The painful irony wasn't lost on anyone. Here was a man battling his own darkness, being celebrated for portraying a character whose entire identity was built on misery, cynicism, and emotional isolation. The line between Hugh and House grew thinner with each passing season.

He kept his American accent between takes to stay in character. He rode his Triumph Bonneville motorcycle through the streets of Los Angeles in the early mornings — a lifelong passion that became something more during those years. "The feeling of air rushing over your body at high speed," he once said. "You can't help but feel things being swept off you — worries being blown off your body."

But he never walked away. Even as the routine became a conveyor belt, even as the exhaustion mounted, he stayed for all eight seasons and all 177 episodes. Because as hard as it was, it was also the role of a lifetime, and he knew it.

When House finally ended in 2012, Laurie stepped back. He took three years away from Hollywood and turned to his other great love — music. He released two blues albums, toured with a band, and let himself breathe for the first time in nearly a decade. When he returned to acting, it was on his own terms — smaller roles, stranger projects, a Golden Globe-winning turn in The Night Manager.

He didn't disappear. He just stopped running on someone else's clock.

Hugh Laurie once said that playing House was like carrying a beautiful but impossibly heavy stone. You can't put it down because it's too precious. But you also can't pretend it isn't crushing you.

Sometimes the greatest performances come from people who understand the pain they're portraying — not because they're acting, but because they've lived it.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B3fryWq2g/