14 DAY TRIAL // The latest issue of Parade magazine brings a special feature on the second highest paid television actor in the US right now, Hugh Laurie, who plays Dr. Gregory House on “House M.D.” Though usually very shy about his personal life, the actor reveals that, while the show has been a hit all over the world, he and his wife, whom he left at home, in London, are not handling the distance that well.
Back when audiences across the pond were beginning to warm up to “House,” Laurie and his wife, Jo Green (whom he married in 1989), decided against moving to Los Angeles as a family, because they did not believe one role should be such a major disruption in their and their kids’ lives. Since then, the actor has been dividing his time between Hollywood and London, but the distance has been taking a serious toll on the marriage, he says.
“I wouldn’t say that doing the series has made my marriage easier. Better? I don’t know about that either,” Laurie tells Parade. However, he’s not the one to complain because life does have a certain way of throwing the good with the bad. “Doing weekly TV is like joining the Navy and going on the other side of the world for ten months of the year. But the truth is that whatever challenging situation you’re in, somebody somewhere has got a much more extreme version. So I think one ought to shut up and not moan about it,” the star adds.
Though nothing in this sense has yet been announced, Laurie probably pictures the day when “House” ends and he gets to return to his family. It’s not even as if he’s leading a double life, he stresses, since he works on each episode until the wee hours of morning, goes home, goes to sleep and then, the next day, starts all over again. However, should he have a choice as regards the end of “House,” he’d want the much beloved series to go out with a major bang, and not have producers drag the story out until only a handful of fans was left.
“We don’t talk about when we’ll pack it in. But when the time comes, I think it would be good to have sort of a clean finish rather than just sort trailing off. I’d like to go out with a bang, not a whimper. In the meantime, House is a character I still am fascinated by. I think that’s part of an actor’s job, to love the character you play. I would be foolish not to go the distance playing him, how ever far that may be. House is tough on patients and tough on his co-workers, but he’s pursuing something that I think is rather noble. He is pursuing the truth – scientific truth and emotional truth,” Laurie adds for the same publication.