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Hugh Laurie gets into 'House' By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY House, premiering tonight (9 ET/PT). (Related review: A very, very fine House) LOS ANGELES  Hugh Laurie wouldn't seem like the first choice to play an ill-mannered American medical genius in the Fox drama, premiering tonight (9 ET/PT). ( Laurie's own dad was a doctor, and he feels a twinge of guilt at "being paid more to become a fake version of my own father." Fox He is English and made his name in the United Kingdom in sketch comedy. And he's quite hospitable during an interview on the Fox studio lot. "Just a bit of housekeeping here," he says, spraying cleaner and wiping down a table outside his trailer before sitting down to talk. Laurie, 45, says he's fascinated by the character of Gregory House, an infectious-disease specialist at a New Jersey hospital who brutalizes colleagues and patients with his harsh honesty. But he likes House — he'd have him as his doctor — and applauds Fox for taking a chance on an unconventional lead who chooses intellect over empathy. "The boldest thing they've done is put such a mean, unsympathetic character at the center of it," says Laurie, whose wife and three children remain in England as he nears the end of a four-month shoot. House's producers took a chance, too, by picking Laurie, known primarily to U.S. audiences as Mr. Little in the Stuart Little movies. Initial casting efforts failed to deliver the "quintessentially American person" producers were looking for, so they cast a wider net, House creator David Shore says. That eventually yielded Laurie, who auditioned via video shot in a hotel bathroom ("It was the only place with enough light," the actor says) in Namibia, where he was shooting the upcoming film Flight of the Phoenix. He was persuasive, if not exactly a household name. Shore says that director Bryan Singer, one of the executive producers, said, " 'See, this is what I want: an American guy.' Brian was completely unaware of the fact that Hugh was English." Laurie, who has received early critical praise for House, is self-deprecating about his skilled American accent, attributing it to "a misspent youth (watching) too much TV and too many movies." Although Laurie's comedy background might seem an odd fit for a dramatic character, Shore says it's good training for an offbeat doctor on a show with comedic touches, including House's Sherlock Holmesian diagnoses of clinic patients. Laurie, who has appeared in the English Blackadder series and Kenneth Branagh's film Peter's Friends, became known in the U.K. for sketch comedy with Cambridge classmate Stephen Fry. He says drama makes more sense than comedy at this point in his career. "I just feel like that's a young person's game. It's partly because you spend your whole time mocking authority figures, and once you reach the age where you could be a general or a bishop or a politician, it means something different. It stops being the kid in class doing impressions of the teacher," he says. Laurie says he's still learning the nature of the complex and contradictory House, whose medical mastery is countered by life challenges, including a leg disability, a reliance on painkillers and seemingly non-existent social skills. He admires House for not worrying about what others think of him. "It's a wonderfully liberating thing. I wish I could be more like that," he says. "I think all actors care (what others think). They want to be loved. They want applause. It's pathetic, but here it is." Shore says he's pleased with Laurie. But the actor has one reservation about his character's occupation. "One of the things that makes me feel guilty about playing this role is that my dad was a doctor," Laurie says. "He was a very gentle soul and, I think, a very good doctor. And I'm probably being paid more to become a fake version of my own father."