The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic. If notability cannot be established, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. (April 2011)

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (April 2011)

This article consists almost entirely of a plot summary and should be expanded to provide more balanced coverage that includes real-world context. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. (April 2011)

"Lockdown" is the seventeenth episode of the sixth season of the American medical drama House. It aired on April 12, 2010. This episode also marks the directorial debut of Hugh Laurie on the show.

This episode has five storylines: When the hospital is sent into lock-down mode due to a missing infant, all of the doctors must remain where they are, leaving Foreman and Taub in the file room, Wilson and Thirteen in the cafeteria playing truth or dare, House in a room with a patient (David Strathairn), and Chase with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Cameron, as Cuddy tries to help police locate the infant. This episode is one of the show's rare instances when no medical mystery is presented, though House still deals with his "patient of the week".

Plot[link]

A father visits his newborn daughter with his son. Meanwhile, Cameron comes to the hospital and confronts Chase with divorce papers at the hallway. Chase refuses to sign the papers until the two discuss their marriage. Cameron realises that she made a mistake by coming to Chase, but as she heads out the hospital goes under a lock down. The newborn has gone missing, and Cuddy has ordered security to keep everyone in their rooms until the baby is found. Trapped in the clinic room with Cameron, Chase accuses Cameron of abandoning their marriage without making any effort to reach out to him. Cameron reminds Chase that he had murdered Dibala.

Meanwhile, Taub is in the file room under the pretense of looking for a patient's records. Foreman comes down to the file room on the same errand, and the two are trapped in the file room by the lock-down. Employee records have been brought down to the file-room to be digitized, so Taub and Foreman take the opportunity to look through House's records, but only find prank records House has put there including a fake malpractice settlement for a "botched penisectomy" on a patient named Lisa Cuddy. Foreman pulls out a bottle of Vicodin he had confiscated from a patient earlier, and he and Taub enjoy painlessly assaulting each other whilst intoxicated.

House has been trapped in a room with a dying patient whose case he had refused previously. He learns the dying patient has only a few hours left to live, and the two connect. In an unusual moment, House actually shares some emotions with his patient. Meanwhile Chase and Cameron continue to argue. Chase asks Cameron if she has ever loved him and she tells him that she does not know. Chase treats this answer as no. Cameron bursts into tears, and says that while she did love Chase, the emotional and mental entrapment she had with her late first husband doomed her and Chase's marriage from the outset. After they mutually apologize to each other for their wrecked marriage, Chase pulls out his pen and signs the divorce papers.

As the vicodin effect begins to wear off on Taub and Foreman, Foreman reveals he knew about the employee records, and had come down to remove an offense before it becomes digitized. Taub reads Foreman's files and discovers a minor offense from during his college years. Foreman reads Taub's records that indicate a stellar early career, something Taub also wants to hide, as he does not feel his career has lived up to his early potential.

Meanwhile, Wilson and Thirteen have been trapped together in the cafeteria. Out of boredom, the two have decided to play truth or dare. Wilson accidentally admits that he's planning on dating someone and Thirteen probes into what else he's been doing without House's knowledge. Thirteen dares Wilson to steal a dollar from the cafeteria's cash register. Wilson succeeds in shooing the cashier away in an obnoxious manner, but then triggers the alarm bell on the register. Thirteen admits she has not been playing well either: she had earlier claimed her father was supportive of her bisexuality when in fact she had never come out to him at all. Wilson is amazed that Thirteen would limit herself just to cater to her father. Wilson tells Thirteen that he had met his first ex-wife and has been troubling himself over whether he should reunite with her. Thirteen suggests Wilson would have asked his ex-wife out again if he had not been catering to House.

After speaking with several nurses, Cuddy turns her suspicion on to the stepson. The boy denies having moved the baby anywhere but confesses to Cuddy that he did not like the baby girl. Cuddy inadvertently discovers there are more towels stacked in the shelf above the toilet than there are supposed to be and goes to see the nurse who was previously in that room, only to realize that she was actually having a series of seizures and had been acting on auto-pilot throughout the day. Suspecting that she might have mistaken the baby for dirty towels, Cuddy rushes into the laundry room where she finds the baby in a laundry cart.

In the clinic room, Cameron and Chase are no longer arguing. Chase and Cameron decide to recap some of the best times they had together before and during their marriage, dancing to "Alison" by Elvis Costello. The two share a "goodbye" kiss, and then exploit the privacy of the lock-down to sleep with each other again.

In the patient room, House's would-be patient refuses House's offer to be sedated with morphine for his last few hours. The patient is holding out to call his grown daughter, who he has not spoken with since she was six. After the patient purposely calls her answering machine just to hear his daughter's voice, House redials and tells him to 'say what he's gotta say.' The patient leaves the final message saying he loves his daughter, and indicates he'd like to take House up on his sedation offer. Security intrudes to tell House that the lock down has ended, but House continues to stay. Just before the patient loses consciousness, House tells him he is sorry he did not take his case.

In the final scenes, the baby is shown reunited with her family while Chase and Cameron are shown sleeping together in the clinic room. Foreman leaves the file-room, having decided not to do what he intended with his file. Taub stays behind and shreds the part of Foreman's file that Foreman had intended to destroy. Wilson tells Thirteen that he has made a dinner date with his ex-wife. At the very end, Taub is at the Hospital entrance/exit, and remarks "Interesting night" to Thirteen. Thirteen flashes her breasts at Taub as she walks by, fulfilling one of Wilson's dares. Taub reiterates "Interesting". The camera pans up to reveal a Latin inscription on the wall above the hospital door: Omnes te moriturum amant ("Everyone loves you when you are about to die").

Production[link]

Director of photography Gale Tattersall used Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras to film the scene with newborn babies. The cameras are primarily designed for still-picture photographs, but are also capable of video recording. The production crew went on to use these cameras alone to film the entire season finale.^[1]

Critical response[link]

The AV Club gave the episode a B- rating.^[2]

This section requires expansion.

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Lockdown" at Fox.com
• "Lockdown" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Lockdown" at TV.com

There are several definitions for the term lockdown, the most common of which pertains to a state of containment or a restriction of progression. A lockdown is an emergency protocol to prevent people or information escaping, which usually can only be ordered by someone in command. Lockdowns are also used to protect people inside a facility or, for example, a computing system, from a dangerous external event.

There may be various levels of lockdown. For example, in the case of buildings, a partial lockdown means that the doors leading outside of the building are locked and people may not exit or enter the building. A full lockdown means that people must stay where they are and may not exit or enter a classroom, apartment unit, store unit, an office space, condo unit or the building. If people are in a hallway they must go into the nearest classroom, apartment unit, condo unit, office space or store unit.

In its most common usage in corrections units, the term lockdown can be defined as a course of action to control the movement of inmates. Confining all prisoners, except workers, to their cells until the end of the day is a good example of a "lockdown period" in a corrections schedule. However a "full lockdown" is used when all prisoners are locked in their cells to prevent a riot or unrest fromm spreading or during an emergency.

In the United States, schools practice lockdowns in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, when potential assailants possessing firearms (with a hostile intent) enter the school, or from internal events. It is considered an overreaction to lock down a school due to nearby criminal activity, such as a bank robbery, as criminals of that sort do not fit the profile of those who would take advantage of the perceived safety of a school (which, in reality, is a terrible place for refuge, as it is full of people in every room, all the time) and only rarely have such criminals entered a school while fleeing police.^{[citation needed]}

In some schools (unlisted for certain reasons^{[citation needed]}, a "non-aggressive" lockdown would mean that all students would follow school lockdown procedure, and a student locker drug search would be performed by either the school staff, a K9 (canine) unit, the local police, or all three. However, not every school practices this, and some will actively search all lockers without requiring a complete lockdown.^{[citation needed]}

In American protest movements dating from the 1960s and 70s, the term lockdown applies to a person's attaching themself to a building, object, fence or other immobile object. This was originally done with chains and handcuffs, but other devices have been introduced, including tripods and tubes or pipes with handholds built in to link a person to an object or to create chains of people.^[1]

Examples[link]

In the wake of the September 11 attacks (2001), a three-day lockdown of American airspace was initiated to prevent any remaining perpetrators from escaping.

In December 2005, the New South Wales Police Service initiated a lockdown of the Sutherland Shire and other beach areas of New South Wales to contain race rioting (and retaliative strikes). The New South Wales Labor government, in an emergency sitting of parliament, passed an array of amendments to legislation giving the New South Wales Police Service additional powers to 'lock down' targeted areas and roads within New South Wales. The legislation introduced to deal with the 2005 Cronulla riots was the Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Public Safety) Act 2005 (NSW). The Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Public Safety) Act 2005 (NSW) amended four separate pieces of legislation:

• Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)
• Bail Act 1978 (NSW)
• Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW)
• Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 (NSW)

Under their new powers, the New South Wales Police Service locked down targeted areas and roads at Cronulla, Bondi, Coogee, Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands to prevent persons of Middle Eastern appearance from committing reprisal attacks and prevent white supremacist agitatorsfrom further violence.

An example of a campus/school lockdown was demonstrated at the University of British Columbia (UBC) on January 30, 2008, when an unknown threat was made and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) issued a lockdown on one of the buildings on campus for six hours, cordoning off the area, and a campus alert was sent via email to everyone affiliated with UBC while students and faculties were to remain locked in the building.^[2][3][4]

On April 10, 2008, two Canadian secondary schools were locked down due to suspected firearm threats. George S. Henry Academy was locked down in Toronto, Ontario at approximately 2:00p.m.^[5]. The Emergency Task Force (TPS) were contacted and the lockdown lasted for more than two hours. New Westminster Secondary School was locked down in New Westminster, British Columbia at approximately 1:40 p.m.^[6]. The Emergency Response Team (ERT) were called and the school was under lockdown until 4:30 p.m. Due to the size of the school, some students were not able to leave until 7:00 p.m.

Another example of a lockdown would be an air raid emergency. During the 1940's and 1950's, neighborhoods such as Detroit, MI would practice a blackout. During this time, the city's Civil Defense workers would immediately activate the neighborhood air raid siren, and families would be required to do the following in order: 1. Shut off all appliances, such as stoves, ovens, furnaces; 2. Shut off valves for water and natural gas or propane, as well as disconnect electricity; 3. Close blackout curtains (plain black curtains that would block light from coming in or going out). Unlike an atomic bomb, where white curtains are used to reflect the blast, black curtains were used to prevent any airborne enemies from seeing in windows; 4. Get to a public shelter, a bomb or fallout shelter, or the household basement, and stay there until the local police dismissed the blackout. Although no longer practiced, air raid drills are still used by a small portion of people who would protect against any enemies. These blackout incidents would begin at 3:00 PM and usually end around 3:30 PM.^{[citation needed]}

Additional uses[link]

• Digital lockdown, a block of all outward flows of information on a computer, including Internet access and internal applications, in order to prevent the spread of viral infections and glitches in the computer, or to prevent a computer hijacker from stealing information.

• Shutdown week, generally refers to the last week of school, when there are no examinations or assignments, and attendance is optional.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Look up lockdown in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• AMBER Alert
• Code Adam
• Curfew
• Lock-on
• Martial Law
• Terrorism

References[link]

A traditional house in Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia

A ranch-style house in Salinas, California, US

"Terem" – Traditional house in European Russia

A Mongolian ger near the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains (in the background); part of Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for habitation by humans or other creatures.^[1][2] The term house includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to complex structures composed of many systems.^[3] English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home".

The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households may be other social groups, organizations or individuals.

Etymology[link]

The English word house derives directly from Old English Hus meaning "dwelling, shelter, home, house," which in turn derives from Proto-Germanic Khusan (reconstructed by etymological analysis) which is of unknown origin.^[4] The house itself gave rise to the letter 'B' through an early Proto-Semitic hieroglyphic symbol depicting a house. The symbol was called "bayt", "bet" or "beth" in various related languages, and became beta, the Greek letter, before it was used by the Romans.^[5]

Inside the house[link]

Layout[link]

Example of an early Victorian "Gingerbread House" in Connecticut, United States, built in 1855

Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Such designing, known as "interior design", has become a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of moving houses according to such factors as rain and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house. Feng shui can also mean the "aura" in or around a dwelling. Compare the real-estate sales concept of "indoor-outdoor flow".

The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square meters" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces.^{[citation needed]} How many floors, or levels, the home is will play a big role in determining the square footage of a home.^{[citation needed]}

Parts[link]

Floor plan of a "foursquare" house

Many houses have several large rooms with specialized functions and several very small rooms for other various reasons. These may include a living/eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) washing and lavatory areas. Additionally, spa room, indoor pool, indoor basketball goal, and so forth. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) often share part of the house with human beings. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A typical "foursquare house" (as pictured) occurred commonly in the early history of the US where they were mainly built, with a staircase in the center of the house, surrounded by four rooms, and connected to other sections of the home (including in more recent eras a garage).

The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include:

History of the interior[link]

It is unknown of the complete origin of the house and its interior, but it can be traced back to the most simplest form of shelters. Roman architect Vitruvius' theories have claimed the first form of architecture as a frame of timber branches finished in mud, also known as the primitive hut.^[6] Philip Tabor later states the contribution of 17th century Dutch houses as the foundation of houses today.

"As far as the idea of the home is concerned, the home of the home is the Netherlands. This idea's crystallization might be dated to the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century, when the Dutch Netherlands amassed the unprecedented and unrivalled accumulation of capital, and emptied their purses into domestic space.^[7]

Communal rooms[link]

In the Middle Ages, the Manor Houses facilitated different activities and events. Furthermore, the houses accommodated numerous people, including the likes of the family, relatives, employees, servants and their guests.^[6] Their lifestyles were largely communal, as areas such as the Great Hall enforced the custom of dining and meetings and the Solar intended for shared sleeping beds.^[8]

Interconnecting rooms[link]

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Italian Renaissance Palazzo consisted of plentiful rooms of connectivity. Unlike the qualities and uses of the Manor Houses, most rooms of the palazzo contained no purpose, yet were given several doors. These doors adjoined rooms in which Robin Evans describes as a "matrix of discrete but thoroughly interconnected chambers."^[9] The layout allowed occupants to freely walk room to room from one door to another, thus breaking the boundaries of privacy.

"Once inside it is necessary to pass from on room to the next, then to the next to traverse the building. Where passages and staircases are used, as inevitably they are, they nearly always connect just one space to another and never serve as general distributors of movement. Thus, despite the precise architectural containment offered by the addition of room upon room, the villa was, in terms of occupation, an open plan, relatively permeable to the numerous members of the household."^[9]

Although very public, the open plan however encouraged sociality and connectivity for all inhabitants.^[6]

Corridor[link]

It is believed that the segregation of rooms and the initiation of privacy may have been first founded in 1597, England at the Beaufort House, Chelsea. Designed by English architect John Thorpe, he writes on his plans, "A Long Entry through all".^[10] The separation of the passageway from the room developed the function of the corridor. This new extension was revolutionary at the time, allowing the integration of one door per room, in which all universally connected to the same corridor. English-German architect Sir Roger Pratt states "the common way in the middle through the whole length of the house, [avoids] the offices from one molesting the other by continual passing through them."^[11] Social hierarchies within the 17th century was highly regarded, as architecture was able epitomize the servants and the upper class. More privacy is offered to the occupant as Pratt further claims, "the ordinary servants may never publicly appear in passing to and fro for their occasions there."^[11] These prejudices between rich and poor soon influenced the integration of the corridor in housing by the 19th century.

Sociologist Witold Rybczynski wrote, "the subdivision of the house into day and night uses, and into formal and informal areas, had begun."^[12] Rooms were changed from public to private as single entryways forced notions of entering a room with a specific purpose.^[6]

Work-free house[link]

Compared to the large scaled houses in England and the Renaissance, the 17th Century Dutch house was smaller, and was only inhabited by up to four to five members.^[6] This was due to their embracement of "self-reliance",^[6] distinguishing the dependence on servants and encompassing lifestyles surrounded by family. It was important for the Dutch to separate work from domesticity, as the home became an escape and a place of comfort. This way of living and the home is noted to be highly similar to the contemporary family and their inhabitations. House layouts also possessed the idea of the corridor as well as the importance of function and privacy.

By the end of the 17th Century, the house layout was soon transformed to become work-free, enforcing these ideas within the long future. This came in favour for the industrial revolution, gaining large-scale factory production and workers.^[6] The house layout of the Dutch and its functions are still relevant today.

Technology and privacy[link]

The introduction of technology and electronic systems within the house has questioned the impressions of privacy as well as the segregation of work from home. Technological advances of surveillance and communications allow insight of personal habits and private lives.^[6] As a result, the "private becomes ever more public, [and] the desire for a protective home life increases, fuelled by the very media that undermine it" writes Hill.^[6] Work also, has been altered due to the increase of communications. The "deluge of information",^[6] has expressed the efforts of work, conveniently gaining access inside the house. Although commuting is reduced, "the desire to separate working and living remains apparent."^[6] In Jonathan Hill's book Immature Architecture, he identifies this new invasion of privacy as Electromagnetic Weather. Natural or man-made weather remains concurrent inside or outside the house, yet the electromagnetic weather is able to generate within both positions.^{[6][clarification needed]}

Construction[link]

The structure of the house (under demolition). This house is constructed from bricks and wood and was later covered by insulating panels. The roof construction is also seen.

In the United States, modern house-construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided walling. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing and heavy-gauge steel framing.^{[citation needed]}

More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition and/or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states/countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large fraction of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses utilize stone or brick.

In the 1900s, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Sears Catalog Homes to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use computers and finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind-loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes.

Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include:

• Cannabrick construction
• Cordwood construction
• Geodesic domes
• Straw-bale construction
• Wattle and daub

Thermographic comparison of traditional (left) and "passivhaus" (right) buildings.

Energy efficiency[link]

In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house-design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (30% of the total in the UK, for example).^[14]

Development of a number of low-energy building types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, the autonomous buildings, the superinsulated and houses built to the Passivhaus standard.

Earthquake protection[link]

One tool of earthquake engineering is base isolation which is increasingly used for earthquake protection. Base isolation is a collection of structural elements of a building that should substantially decouple it from the shaking ground thus protecting the building's integrity^[15] and enhancing its seismic performance. This technology, which is a kind of seismic vibration control, can be applied both to a newly designed building and to seismic upgrading of existing structures.^[16]

Normally, excavations are made around the building and the building is separated from the foundations. Steel or reinforced concrete beams replace the connections to the foundations, while under these, the isolating pads, or base isolators, replace the material removed. While the base isolation tends to restrict transmission of the ground motion to the building, it also keeps the building positioned properly over the foundation. Careful attention to detail is required where the building interfaces with the ground, especially at entrances, stairways and ramps, to ensure sufficient relative motion of those structural elements.

Found Materials[link]

In many parts of the world, houses are constructed using scavenged materials. In Manila, houses in the Payatas neighborhood are made primarily of material sourced from a nearby garbage dump.^[17]

In Dakar it is not uncommon to see houses made of recycled materials standing atop a mixture of garbage and sand which serves as a foundation. The garbage-sand mixture is also used to protect the house from flooding.^[18]

Legal issues[link]

Buildings with historical importance have restrictions.

United Kingdom[link]

New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has less legal protection than when buying a new car. New houses in the UK may be covered by a NHBC guarantee but some people feel that it would be more useful to put new houses on the same legal footing as other products.^{[citation needed]}

United States and Canada[link]

In the US and Canada, many new houses are built in housing tracts, which provide homeowners a sense of "belonging" and the feeling they have "made the best use" of their money. However, these houses are sometimes built as cheaply and quickly as possible by large builders seeking to maximize profits. Many environmental health issues may be ignored or minimized in the construction of these structures. In one case in Benicia, California, a housing tract was built over an old landfill. Home buyers were never told, and only found out when some began having reactions to high levels of lead and chromium.^{[citation needed]}

Identifying houses[link]

With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and/or parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names; and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations: see for example the house of Howards End or the castle of Brideshead Revisited. A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering.

Animal houses[link]

Humans often build "houses" for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird-houses, hen-houses/chicken-coops and doghouses (kennels); while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bat-houses, nesting-sites for wild ducks and other birds, bee houses, giraffe houses, kangaroo houses, worm houses, hermit crab houses, as well as shelters for many other animals.

Shelter[link]

A modern-style house in Canberra, Australia.

A mountain house in Barzio, Italy.

Forms of (relatively) simple shelter may include:

Houses and symbolism[link]

Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth, whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation.

Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage and/or of streetscape values. Commemorative plaques may mark such structures.

Home ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters.

Peter Olshavsky's "House for the Dance of Death"^[19] provides a 'pataphysical variation on the house.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Houses

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up house in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Housing from UCB Libraries GovPubs

Hugh Laurie OBE
Hugh Laurie during the House session of the 2009 Fox Winter TCA
Born	James Hugh Calum Laurie (1959-06-11) 11 June 1959 (age 53) Oxford, England, UK
Alma mater	Cambridge University Eton College
Occupation	Actor, comedian, musician, singer, writer, director
Years active	1981–present
Spouse	Jo Green (m. 1989) «start: (1989)»"Marriage: Jo Green to Hugh Laurie" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Hugh_Laurie)
Children	2 sons, 1 daughter
Website
hughlaurieblues.com

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959), known as Hugh Laurie (/ˈhjuː ˈlɒri/), is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director. He first became known as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, along with his friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry, whom he joined in the cast of Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster from 1987 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, he played Dr Gregory House, the protagonist of House, for which he received two Golden Globe awards, two Screen Actors Guild awards, and six Emmy nominations. As of August 2010, Laurie is the highest paid actor in a drama series on US television.^[1] He has been listed in the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid actor ever in a TV Drama—earning US$ 700,000^[2] per episode in House—and for being the most watched leading man on television.^[3][4]

Early life and education[link]

Laurie was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.^[5] The youngest of four children, Laurie has an older brother named Charles and two older sisters named Susan and Janet.^[6] He had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw).^[5][7] His father, Ran Laurie, was a medical doctor who also won an Olympic gold medal in the coxless pairs (rowing) at the 1948 London Games.^[5][8]

Although Laurie was brought up in the Presbyterian church as a child,^[5][9] 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."^[10] 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 studied for a degree in Archaeology and Social Anthropology. While at Cambridge he was a member of Footlights, the university dramatic club that has produced many well-known actors and comedians, and he was club president in 1981. He was also a member of the Hermes Club and the Hawks' Club.^[5]

Like his father, Laurie was an oarsman at school and university;^[5] 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^[11] coxless pairs for Eton Vikings rowing club. Later, he also achieved a Blue while taking part in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.^[12] Cambridge lost that year by 5 feet.^[13] During this time Laurie was training for up to 8 hours a day and was on course to become an Olympic standard rower.^[14] Laurie is a member of Leander Club, one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world.

Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever (mononucleosis), 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.^[5] 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.

Acting career[link]

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.^[5] Other projects followed, of which one was their BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie; another project was Jeeves and Wooster,^[5] 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 and came together for a retrospective show in 2010 titled Fry and Laurie Reunited.

Laurie starred in the Thames Television film "Letters from a Bomber Pilot" (1985) directed by David Hodgson. This was a serious acting role, the film being dramatised from the letters home of Pilot Officer J.R.A. "Bob" Hodgson, a pilot in RAF Bomber Command, who was killed in action in 1943.^[15]

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 Georgian-period costume, a toned-down version of his Prince George character from Blackadder the Third, opposite John Malkovich, similarly reprising his role of the Vicomte Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons.^[16]

Laurie’s later film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), adapted by and starring Emma Thompson; the Disney live-action film 101 Dalmatians (1996), where he played Jasper, one of the bumbling criminals hired to kidnap the puppies; Elton’s adaptation of his novel Inconceivable, Maybe Baby (2000); Girl From Rio; the 2004 remake of The Flight of the Phoenix; and the three Stuart Little films.

In 1996, Laurie’s first novel, The Gun Seller, an intricate thriller laced with Wodehouseian humour, was published and became a best-seller.^[5] He has since been working on the screenplay for a movie version and on a second novel, The Paper Soldier. In 1998, Laurie had a brief guest-starring role on Friends in "The One with Ross's Wedding, Part Two".

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.

Laurie's fame expanded to the American public in 2004, when he first starred as the acerbic physician specialising in diagnostic medicine, Dr Gregory House in the popular Fox medical drama House. For his portrayal, Laurie assumes an American accent.^[5] Laurie was in Namibia filming Flight of the Phoenix and recorded the audition tape for the show in the bathroom of the hotel, the only place he could get enough light.^[17] While working on Flight of the Phoenix, Jacob Vargas operated the camera to shoot Laurie's audition tape for House. Laurie's US accent was so convincing that executive producer Bryan Singer, who was unaware at the time that Laurie is English, pointed to him as an example of just the kind of compelling American actor he had been looking for.^[17] Laurie also adopts the accent between takes on the set of House,^[18] as well as during script read-throughs, although he used his native accent when directing the House episode "Lockdown".^[18]

Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award^[19] 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.^[20] Laurie was not nominated for the 2006 Emmys, apparently to the outrage of Fox executives,^[21] 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 proceeded 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 has since been nominated in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Laurie's success on the show extends to the financial, earning over $700,000 per episode.^[2]

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 involvement in House. In July 2006, Laurie appeared on Bravo!'s Inside the Actors Studio, where he also performed one of his own comic songs, "Mystery", accompanying himself on the piano.^[5] 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.

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, Laurie appeared as Captain James Biggs in Street Kings, opposite Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker, and then in 2009 as the eccentric Dr. 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 and himself assuming an American accent. In 2010, Laurie filmed an independent feature called The Oranges. In 2010, Laurie guest starred in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXI" as Roger, a castaway who is planning a murder scheme on a ship during Homer and Marge's second honeymoon.^{[citation needed]} On 8 February 2012, Fox announced that season 8 of House will be the last.

Music career[link]

From the age of six, Laurie took piano lessons with a Mrs. Hare.^[22] He plays the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica and saxophone. He has displayed his musical talents in episodes of several television series, most notably 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. Additionally, 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.

On episodes of House he has played several classic rock 'n roll instruments including Gibson Flying V and Les Paul guitars. His character has a Hammond B-3 organ in his home and on one episode performed the introduction to Procol Harum's classic "Whiter Shade of Pale".^[23] Laurie appears as a scientist/doctor in the pop video to accompany Kate Bush's song Experiment IV. On 1 May 2011, Laurie and a jazz quintet closed the 2011 Cheltenham Jazz Festival to great acclaim.^[24]

On 15 May 2011 Laurie was the subject of the ITV series Perspectives, explaining his love for the music of New Orleans and playing music, from his album Let Them Talk, at studios and live venues in the city itself.^[22] He was the subject of PBS Great Performances Let them Talk, also about New Orleans jazz, first broadcast on 30 September 2011.^[25]

Personal life[link]

Laurie's mother, Patricia (née Laidlaw), died from motor neurone disease in Oxfordshire at the age of 73 in 1989, when Laurie was 30. According to Laurie, it took her two years to die, and she suffered "painful, plodding paralysis" while being cared for by Laurie's father, whom he called "the sweetest man in the whole world".^[6]

Laurie married theatre administrator Jo Green in June 1989 in Camden, London. They live in Belsize Park, London with sons Charlie and Bill and daughter Rebecca.^[26] They had planned to move the whole family to Los Angeles in 2008 due to the strain of being mostly separated for 9 months each year,^[26] but ultimately decided against it.^[27] Charlie had a cameo in A Bit of Fry & Laurie in the last sketch of the episode entitled Special Squad, as baby William (whom Stephen and Hugh begin to "interrogate" about "what he's done with the stuff", calling him a scumbag and telling him that he's been a very naughty boy) during his infancy, while Rebecca had a role in the film Wit as five-year-old Vivian Bearing.

Laurie's best friend is long time comedy partner Stephen Fry, who was best man at his wedding and is godfather to his children.^[28] Laurie is good friends with his House co-star Robert Sean Leonard and continues his friendship with actress Emma Thompson.^[29]

On 23 May 2007 Laurie was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2007 New Year Honours List, for his services to drama, by Queen Elizabeth II.^[30][31][32]

Laurie has struggled with severe clinical depression, and continues to receive regular treatment from a psychotherapist. He stated in an interview that he first concluded he had a problem while driving in a charity demolition derby in 1996, during which he realised that driving around explosive crashes caused him to be neither excited nor frightened, but instead bored.^[5][7] "Boredom," he commented in an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, "is not an appropriate response to exploding cars.".^[5]

Laurie admires the writings of P.G. Wodehouse, explaining in a 27 May 1999 article in The Daily Telegraph how reading Wodehouse novels had saved his life.^[33]

In a further interview in The Daily Telegraph Laurie confirms his atheism.^[34]

Laurie is an avid motorcycle enthusiast. He has two motorcycles, one at his London home and one at his Los Angeles home. His bike in the United States is a Triumph Bonneville, his "feeble attempt to fly the British flag".^[35]

In March 2012 Laurie was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater Selwyn College.^[36][37]

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

On 26 July 2010, it was announced that Laurie would be releasing a blues album after signing a contract with Warner Bros. The album, called Let Them Talk, was released in France on 18 April 2011 and in Germany on 29 April. The album features collaborations from well-known artists such as Tom Jones, Irma Thomas, and Dr. John.

Singles[link]