Hugh Laurie as Gregory House

Gregory House, M.D., is a fictional character and protagonist of the Fox medical drama House. Portrayed by Hugh Laurie, the character is a maverick medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (Based on Yale-New Haven Hospital) . House's character has been described as a "misanthrope", a "cynic" and a "curmudgeon", the latter of which was named one of the top television words of the year in honor of the character. On the series, the character's unorthodox diagnostic approaches, radical therapeutic motives, and stalwart rationality has resulted in much conflict between himself and his colleagues. House is also often portrayed as lacking empathy and sympathy for his patients, a practice that allots him the time to solve pathological enigmas. The character is partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

Character Biography

Gregory Magnus House, was born to John and Blythe House on June 11, 1959. His social security number was issued in Ohio. House is a "military brat", as his father served as a Marine Corps pilot and transferred often to other bases during House's childhood. House presumably picked up his affinity for languages during this period, and shows a level of understanding of Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese and Hindi. One place his father was stationed was in Egypt, where House developed a passing fascination with archaeology and treasure-hunting, an interest which led him to keep his treasure-hunting tools well into his adulthood. Another station was Japan, where, at age 14, House discovered his vocation after witnessing a buraku doctor solve a case no other doctor could handle. Dr. House loves his mother but hates his father, who he claims has an "insane moral compass." House avoids both parents and spends an entire episode dodging a night out with them. At one point, House tells a story of his parents leaving him with his grandmother whose punishments constituted abuse. He later confesses that it was his father who abused him. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, House studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researching psychiatry and behavioral sciences until classmate Phillip Weber reported House for copying exam answers from him. Following his expulsion from Johns Hopkins, he applied and was accepted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he received his M.D. and met Lisa Cuddy, his future boss. There is a degree of sexual tension between the two characters due to a one-night stand in the past. About ten years before the series began, House entered into a relationship with Stacy Warner, a constitutional lawyer. They met at a "Doctors vs Lawyers" paint ball event where she shot him. Five years later, he suffered an infarction in his right leg, which went undiagnosed for three days due to doctors' concerns that he was exhibiting drug seeking behavior (House was also unable to diagnose his own infarction). An aneurysm in his thigh had clotted, leading to an infarction and causing his quadriceps muscles to become necrotic. House had the dead muscle bypassed in order to restore circulation to the remainder of his leg, risking organ failure and cardiac arrest. He was willing to endure excruciating post operative pain to retain the use of his leg. After House was put into a chemically-induced coma to sleep through the worst of the pain, Stacy decided to choose a safer surgical middle-ground procedure between amputation and a bypass by removing just the dead muscle. This resulted in the partial loss of use in his leg, and left House with a lesser, but still serious, level of pain for the rest of his life. House could not forgive Stacy for making the decision, so she left him. When Stacy makes her first appearance in the series, she is married to a high school guidance counselor named Mark Warner. Although House and Stacy grow closer together and reunite briefly during the second season, House tells Stacy to go back to her husband, which devastates her. Her character has not returned to the show since.

Characterization

House's character frequently shows his cunning and biting wit, enjoys picking people apart, and often mocks their weaknesses. House accurately deciphers people's motives and histories from aspects of their personality and appearance. Dr. James Wilson once states in the episode "DNR" that while "some doctors have the messiah complex — they need to save the world", House has "a Rubik's complex" — he needs "to solve the puzzle." House typically waits as long as possible before meeting his patients. When he encounters his patients, House shows an unorthodox bedside manner and uses unconventional treatments. However, he impresses them with rapid and accurate diagnoses after seemingly not paying attention. This skill was demonstrated in an episode where House diagnoses an entire waiting room full of patients in under a minute on his way out of the hospital clinic. His crankiness is commonly attributed to the chronic pain in his leg (as a result of the infarction) for which he requires the aid of a cane. According to Stacy Warner, his former girlfriend, he was "pretty much the same" before the infarction, and his boss Lisa Cuddy claimed that after the surgery he was "an egomaniacal, narcissistic pain in the ass - same as before." For his chronic leg pain, House takes Vicodin (hydrocodone and paracetamol (acetaminophen)) on a daily basis, and as a result has developed an addiction to the drug. He concedes that he has an addiction, but says that the addiction is not a problem because it does not interfere with his work. House openly talks about and makes references to pornography. In one episode, he returns the flirtations of a female under age patient ("Lines in the Sand"), and is seen on at least two occasions engaging the services of a prostitute. He is a staunch atheist and openly mocks colleagues or patients who express any level of belief in any aspect of religion. House frequently says "Everybody lies," but jokingly remarked that he was lying when he said that in the first season finale. House criticizes social etiquette for lack of rational purpose and usefulness. In one episode, he explains how he envies an autistic patient because society allows the patient to forgo the niceties that he must suffer through.House is a strong non-conformist and gives little regard to how others perceive him. Throughout the series, he displays sardonic contempt for authority figures. House shows an almost constant disregard for his own appearance, possessing a permanent stubble and dressing informally in jeans and t-shirt. He avoids wearing the standard white lab coat to avoid patients recognizing him to be a doctor. House has a small social life and his only friend is Dr. James Wilson. Wilson knew House before the infarction, and looked after him when House's relationship with Stacy ended. Dr. Wilson's moving into House's apartment in "Sex Kills" symbolizes his taking emotional refuge in his friend. Although they frequently analyze and criticize each other's motives, Wilson has risked his career to protect House. House has quietly admitted, at several instances, that he is grateful for Wilson's presence, including referring to Wilson as his best friend.

Casting

Before Hugh Laurie auditioned for the role of Gregory House, he was filming Flight of the Phoenix in Namibia. Laurie planned to audition for the roles of both James Wilson and Gregory House. When Laurie read that Wilson was a character with a "handsome open face," he decided to audition solely for the role of House. After watching casting tapes for the pilot episode, Bryan Singer grew frustrated and refused to consider any more British actors because of their flawed American accents. However, when he saw Hugh Laurie's audition tape, not knowing who he was, Singer was fooled by Laurie's American accent. He mistook him as an American and praised Laurie as an example of a true American actor. Laurie initially believed that James Wilson would be the protagonist of the show after reading the brief description of the character and did not find out that House was the main character until he read the full script of the pilot episode. Prior to the airing of the series, the producers were also concerned that Laurie lacked sex appeal to the viewers. For his portrayal of Gregory House, Hugh Laurie has won Best Actor in a Television Drama Series from the Golden Globe in 2006 and 2007, and Best Actor from Drama Series from Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Concept and creation

Hugh Laurie describes House as a character who refuses to "obey the usual pieties of modern life" and expects to find a rare diagnosis when he is treating his patient. As a protagonist, many aspects of his personality are the antithesis of what might be expected from a doctor. Producer Katie Jacobs views House as a static character who is accustomed to living in misery. Jacobs has said that Dr. Wilson, his only friend in the show, and House both avoid mature relationships, which brings the two closer together. Robert Sean Leonard has said that Dr. Wilson is one of the few who voluntarily maintains a relationship with House, because his character is free to criticize him. Despite his sardonic personality, House is portrayed as a character who is reliant on people surrounding him. Lisa Edelstein says this characteristic is portrayed in the third season, during which his medical career is at a jeopardy due to Detective Michael Tritter who arrests him for possessing narcotics. House's trouble ends thanks to Lisa Cuddy's perjury during his hearing. Adopting an American accent for his role has been difficult for Laurie, who says words such as "coronary artery" are particularly tricky to pronounce. The cane tricks that are seen throughout the series are created by Laurie himself.

Parallels to Sherlock Holmes
House's character is partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. The name "House" is a play on "Holmes" (with English pronunciation, a homophone for "homes"). Actor Robert Sean Leonard has said that House and his character were originally intended to play the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the series although he believes that House's team has assumed the Watson role. House is addicted to Vicodin and experiments with other drugs, while Holmes has a cocaine habit and smokes a pipe regularly. Both men are musicians (House plays piano and guitar; Holmes plays violin) and both have a talent for accurately deciphering people's motives and histories from aspects of their personality and appearance. Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street, and House also lives at 221B. The name of House's nemesis in "No Reason," Jack Moriarty, coincides with Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Professor James Moriarty. The names of the two supporting characters in House and Sherlock Holmes—Dr. James Wilson and Dr. John Watson—each have the same initials.