Biography and Wiki
Hugh Laurie is the youngest of four children, born to William George Ranald Mundell "Ran" Laurie, a physician who won an Olympic gold medal in rowing at the 1948 London Games. This athletic background initially influenced Laurie's aspirations, as he was an avid rower during his school and university days. However, after contracting glandular fever, he shifted his focus to theater, joining the prestigious Cambridge Footlights Drama Society, where he met his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry.
| Occupation | Blues Singer |
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| Date of Birth | 11 June 1959 |
| Age | 66 Years |
| Birth Place | Blackbird Leys, Oxfordshire, England |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about Hugh Laurie's current height and weight are not widely reported, he is generally known to be around 6 feet 2 inches tall.
| Height | 6 feet 2 inches |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Laurie has been married to Jo Green since 1989. The couple has three children together. Before his marriage, he was in a relationship with Emma Thompson, whom he met during his time at Cambridge Footlights.
He has an older brother, Charles Alexander Lyon Mundell Laurie, 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 neurone 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's parents, who were both of Scottish descent, attended St Columba's Presbyterian Church (now United Reformed Church) in Oxford. He notes that "belief in God didn't play a large role" in his home, but "a certain attitude to life and the living of it did". He followed this by stating, "Pleasure was something that was treated with great suspicion, pleasure was something that... I was going to say it had to be earned but even the earning of it didn't really work. It was something to this day, I mean, I carry that with me. I find pleasure a difficult thing; I don't know what you do with it, I don't know where to put it." He later stated, "I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted, he'd take it away."
Laurie was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School from 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, specialising in social anthropology, and graduated with third-class honours in 1981.
Like his father, Laurie rowed at school and university. In 1977, he was a member of the junior coxed pair that won the British national title before representing Britain's Youth Team at the 1977 Junior World Rowing Championships. In 1980, Laurie and his rowing partner, J.S. Palmer, were runners-up in the Silver Goblets coxless pairs for Eton Vikings rowing club. He also achieved a Blue while taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Cambridge lost that year by five feet. During this time, Laurie was training for up to eight hours a day and was on course to become an Olympic-standard rower. He is a member of the Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world, and was a member of the Hermes Club and Hawks' Club.
Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever, Laurie joined the Cambridge Footlights, a university dramatic club that has produced many well-known actors and comedians including members of the popular British surreal comedy group, Monty Python. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship; the two remain good friends. She introduced him to his future comedy partner, Stephen Fry. Laurie, Fry and Thompson later parodied themselves as the University Challenge representatives of "Footlights College, Oxbridge" in "Bambi", an episode of The Young Ones, with the series' co-writer Ben Elton completing their team.
Laurie was initially cast as Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, in Singer's film Superman Returns but had to bow out of the project because of his commitment to House. In July 2006, Laurie appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, where he also performed one of his own comic songs, "Mystery", accompanying himself on the piano. He hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live, in which he appeared in drag in a sketch about a man (Kenan Thompson) with a broken leg who accuses his doctor of being dishonest. Laurie played the man's wife.
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| Husband | Jo Green (m. 16 June 1989) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Hugh Laurie's net worth is estimated to be between $40 million and $45 million, primarily due to his successful acting career. His most lucrative role was as Dr. Gregory House in the hit medical drama House, for which he earned up to $700,000 per episode, translating to $16 million per season.
Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in House in 2005. Although he did not win, he did receive a Golden Globe in both 2006 and 2007 for his work on the series and the Screen Actors Guild award in 2007 and 2009. Laurie was also awarded a large increase in salary, from what was rumoured to be a mid-range five-figure sum to $350,000 per episode. Laurie was not nominated for the 2006 Emmys, apparently to the outrage of Fox executives, but he still appeared in a scripted, pre-taped intro, where he parodied his House character by rapidly diagnosing host Conan O'Brien and then proceeding to grope him as the latter asked him for help to get to the Emmys on time. He would later go on to speak in French while presenting an Emmy with Dame Helen Mirren, and was since nominated in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.
Career, Business and Investments
Laurie's career spans over four decades, with notable roles in Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, and Veep. He has also made appearances in Chance and was a part of the comedic duo Fry and Laurie. His work on House earned him two Golden Globes and numerous Emmy nominations.
In addition to acting, Laurie is a skilled musician and has released several blues albums, including Let Them Talk and Didn't It Rain, showcasing his musical talents.
Fry and Laurie worked together on various projects throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among them were the Blackadder series, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, starring Rowan Atkinson, with Laurie in various roles, including two roles in Blackadder II which marked his debut appearance in the series, first as drunk Simon Partridge in "Beer" and then as the villainous Prince Ludwig the Indestructible in the Blackadder II final episode, "Chains" and then Prince George in Blackadder the Third and Lieutenant George in Blackadder Goes Forth. Other projects followed, of which one was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie; another project was Jeeves and Wooster, an adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's stories, in which Laurie played Jeeves's employer, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster. He and Fry participated in charity stage events, such as ''Hysteria! 1, 2 & 3 and Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Third Ball, Comic Relief TV shows and the variety show Fry and Laurie Host a Christmas Night with the Stars''. They collaborated again on the film Peter's Friends (1992) and came together for a retrospective show in 2010 titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.
In August 2007, Laurie appeared on BBC Four's documentary Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out, filmed in celebration of Fry's 50th birthday. In 2008, he took part in Blackadder Rides Again which saw him reuniting with former Blackadder producer, John Lloyd who had travelled to the set of House MD in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California to interview Laurie who recalled his time working on the Blackadder series. Laurie also appeared as Captain James Biggs in Street Kings, opposite Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker, and then in 2009 as the eccentric Dr. Herbert Cockroach, PhD in DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens. He also hosted Saturday Night Live for the second time on the Christmas show in which he sang a medley of three-second Christmas songs to close his monologue. In 2009, Laurie returned to guest star in another Family Guy episode, "Business Guy", parodying Gregory House. In 2010, Laurie guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XXI" as Roger, a castaway who is planning a murder scheme on a ship during Homer and Marge's second honeymoon.
Laurie is an accomplished pianist who began taking piano lessons at the age of six. He sings and plays the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica, and saxophone. He has displayed his musical talents throughout his acting career, such as on A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, House and when he hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2006. He is a vocalist and keyboard player for the Los Angeles charity rock group Band From TV.
Social Network
Hugh Laurie maintains a private personal life and is not very active on social media platforms. However, his work and public appearances are widely covered by media outlets.
Education
Laurie attended the Dragon School, Eton College, and later studied social anthropology at Selwyn College, Cambridge. During his time at Cambridge, he was heavily involved with the Cambridge Footlights Drama Society.
In 1980–81, his final year at university, besides rowing Laurie was president of the Footlights, with Thompson as vice-president. They took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and won the first Perrier Comedy Award which was presented to them by Rowan Atkinson. The revue was written principally by Laurie and Fry, and the cast also included Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer. The Perrier Award led to a West End transfer for The Cellar Tapes and a television version of the revue, broadcast in May 1982. It resulted in Laurie, Fry and Thompson being selected, along with Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane and Siobhan Redmond to write and appear in a new sketch comedy show for Granada Television, Alfresco, which ran for two series.
Since 2002, Laurie has appeared in a range of British television dramas, guest-starring that year in two episodes of the first season of the spy thriller series Spooks on BBC One. In 2003, he starred in and also directed ITV's comedy-drama series fortysomething (in one episode of which Stephen Fry appears). In 2001, he voiced the character of a bar patron in the Family Guy episode "One If by Clam, Two If by Sea". Laurie voiced the character of Mr. Wolf in the cartoon Preston Pig. He was a panellist on the first episode of QI, alongside Fry as host. In 2004, Laurie guest-starred as a professor in charge of a space probe called Beagle, on The Lenny Henry Show.
Following Meat Loaf's appearance in the House episode "Simple Explanation", Laurie played piano as a special guest on the song "If I Can't Have You" from Meat Loaf's 2010 album Hang Cool Teddy Bear. Laurie co-wrote and performed the humorous blues song, "Sperm Test in the Morning", in the film Maybe Baby.
In June 2013, Laurie was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where he chose tracks from Joe Cocker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Randy Newman, Professor Longhair, Son House, Nina Simone, Lester Young–Buddy Rich Trio, and Van Morrison as his eight favourite discs. This was his second appearance on the show, having previously been on a 1996 episode, where he chose tracks by Muddy Waters, Max Bruch, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra with Count Basie, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Van Morrison and Dr. John.
