Early life and education

Laurie was born in Oxford, England.[1] The youngest of four children, Laurie has a brother (six years older) and two sisters.[2] He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother.[1][3] His father, W.G.R.M. "Ran" Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.[1][4] Laurie was raised in the Scottish Presbyterian church,[1][5] though he has declared: "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."[6] He was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School. He later went on to Eton and then to Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he achieved a Third-Class Honours degree in archaeology and anthropology and was a member of the prestigious Hawks' Club.[1] Like his father, Laurie was an oarsman at school and university;[1] 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[7] coxless pairs for Eton Vikings rowing club. Later, he also achieved a Blue while taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.[8] Cambridge lost that year by 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in). Laurie is a member of the Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world. Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever), he joined the Cambridge Footlights, which has been the starting point for many successful British comedians. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship; the two remain good friends.[1] 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. In 1980–81, his final year at university, besides rowing, Laurie was also president of the Footlights, with Thompson as vice-president. They took their annual revue, The Cellar Tapes, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won the first Perrier Comedy Award. The revue was written principally by Laurie and Fry, and the cast also included Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer and Penny Dwyer.

Career

Hugh Laurie in 2009 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. Fry and Laurie went on to work 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, but most notably Prince George and Lieutenant George.[1] Other projects followed, of which one was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry and Laurie; another project was Jeeves and Wooster,[1] an adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse’s stories, in which Laurie played Jeeves’s employer, the amiable twit Bertie Wooster. He and Fry worked together at various 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. Laurie appeared in the music videos for the 1986 single "Experiment IV" by Kate Bush and the 1992 single "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox, in full Regency-period costume as Prince George from Blackadder the Third, opposite John Malkovich, similarly reprising his role of the Vicomte Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons.