James Hugh Calum Laurie, CBE, is an English actor, comedian, writer, author, musician, singer, director, and producer. He is best known for his role as Dr. Gregory House in the Fox medical drama series House (2004–2012). His other television roles include Prince George and various other characters in the BBC1 sitcom Blackadder, Bertram "Bertie" Wooster in the ITV comedy-drama series Jeeves and Wooster, and for his work in the sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie (all three of which he starred alongside Stephen Fry). He is also well-known for portraying Mr. Little in the Stuart Little franchise, as well as voicing Dr. Cockroach in DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens.
For Disney, he played Jasper in the 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians, as well as voiced Wing Commander Gutsy in the 2005 animated feature film Valiant. He also portrayed David Nix, the main antagonist of the 2015 sci-fi film Tomorrowland.
Laurie was born in the Blackbird Leys area of Oxford. He is the youngest of four children of Patricia (née Laidlaw) and William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, who was a physician and winner of an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games. He has an older brother, Charles Alexander Lyon Mundell, and two older sisters, Susan and Janet. He had a strained relationship with his mother, whom he noted as "Presbyterian by character, by mood." He later said, "I was frustration to her. She didn't like me." His mother died from motor neuron disease in 1989, at the age of 73. According to Laurie, she endured the disease for two years and suffered "painful, plodding paralysis" while being cared for by Laurie's father, whom he has called "the sweetest man in the whole world".
Laurie was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School from ages seven to 13, later stating: "I was, in truth, a horrible child. Not much given to things of a "bookey" nature, I spent a large part of my youth smoking Number Six and cheating in French vocabulary tests." He went on to Eton College, which he described as "the most private of private schools". He arrived at Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1978, which he says he attended "as a result of family tradition" since his father went there. Laurie notes that his father was a successful rower at Cambridge, and that he was "trying to follow in [his] father's footsteps." He studied archaeology and anthropology, specializing in social anthropology, and graduated with third-class honors in 1981.
Roles[]
(Valiant)
Gallery[]
