Man About the House
Sometimes comedic actors create characters that are so memorable that the actor becomes remembered for that particular role alone. Not many people are immediately familiar with actors Michael Richards or George Wendt, but seen on screen they are instantly recognisable as Kramer from Seinfeld and Norm from Cheers.
Hugh Laurie – in his Black Adder roles of Prince Ludwig, Prince Regent, Viscount George Bufton-Tufton and Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St Barleigh – created a comic collage of privileged nincompoops throughout British history. Many would consider playing such roles as being more about having a laugh than about acting. But in playing a ‘stupid’ character, Laurie was not portraying someone who didn’t think; stupid characters think a lot, it’s just that their thought processes don’t lead them to sensible conclusions. But however the Black Adder characters are analysed, it requires a suspension of disbelief to imagine the actor portraying them playing a grumpy American doctor in a popular TV series. Still, this is what Laurie has pulled off in House.
Tackling drama after achieving recognition for comic roles requires changing the perception both of the public and people in the entertainment industry. There are some who do this effectively. One of them has been Australian actor Eric Bana, who started as a comedian on TV in Full Frontal in the early nineties and later used his masterful vocal mimicry to portray ‘Chopper’ Read – the 2000 movie role that was a springboard to a ‘serious’ acting career. Another Australian performer, Shane Bourne, who was once identified only with light entertainment, made the transition to drama with critically acclaimed roles in the TV series MDA and City Homicide, yet still gets laughs as the host of Thank God You’re Here.
Not all actors who try to make the transition are successful, though. Charlie Chaplin played a wife killer in Monsieur Verdoux (1947), but the idea that ‘the Tramp’ could be a murderer was met with audience disbelief. Jackie Gleason fared somewhat better in moving from comedy to drama: he was Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners, then, later, Minnesota Fats in The Hustler. More recently, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler and Robin Williams have all tackled ‘serious’ roles, with varying degrees of success, after first establishing themselves as comedians. American actor Bill Murray has starred in both comedies and dramas, though it could be argued that he hasn’t created completely different characters. Instead, his dry humour and ability to improvise have perfectly suited films such as Lost in Translation.
There are great actors who can do both drama and comedy (Dustin Hoffman, Alec Guinness and Sean Penn all come to mind), because their attention to detail means they create such rounded characters that the comedy comes from the script. Peter Sellers’ chameleon qualities helped him to disappear into each of his roles. While Hugh Laurie also seems to have this chameleon factor, he has as well an arsenal of skills and experience that has made his transition from comedy to drama a little smoother.
But what he has achieved in House is not just another case of a comedian playing it straight. He has vaulted clear across the Atlantic – an Englishman playing an American, like Sellers (in Lolita and Dr Strangelove) before him. As Gregory House, Laurie embodies a crotchety doctor with a cane in his hand and sarcasm on his lips, a character so strong that many of Laurie’s past roles now appear to have been portrayed by another person.
Laurie, fifty, perhaps drew on his personal history to hone the House persona. He was raised in Oxford, and was schooled at Eton and Cambridge. There, Laurie pursued rowing (like his father, who was a medical doctor) but glandular fever forced him to give up the sport. It was then that he began acting with the Cambridge Footlights, and it was through the amateur theatrical club that he met future collaborators Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry. Laurie and many of his fellow Footlights members went on to present a new era of British comedy, creating such programs as The Young Ones and Black Adder.
As is often the case, Laurie’s comic skill has been offset by episodes of depression. In an interview earlier this year on the American program Inside the Actors Studio, Laurie explained how he had identified his condition. While participating in a charity demolition derby in 1996, he said, he realised that he was neither excited nor scared. ‘Boredom,’ he offered, ‘is not an appropriate response to exploding cars.’
It has been claimed that when one of the House producers first saw Laurie’s audition tape, he did not even realise that he was watching an English actor. Laurie had been able to bring fluffy, singsong qualities to his Black Adder characters, but could now also convey the American accent, deep tones and world-weariness of Gregory House. This underlines one of Laurie’s assets: vocal dexterity. In addition to facilitating his successful leap from comedy to drama, his vocal skills have made him a natural for voice-over work – most recently, as Dr Cockroach PhD in the 2009 animated children’s movie Monsters vs Aliens.
The successful transition from comedic to dramatic roles is really just one measure of an actor. Sometimes comic actors do dramatic roles; sometimes dramatic actors take on comic roles. But there are few actors who can occupy both worlds highly effectively. Laurie is one of them.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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