Написанна перед началом показа Fortysomething Prime Time
Hugh's that 44-year-old?
June 24, 2003
Byline: WIL MARLOW
IT took Hugh Laurie three years to get used to being in his 40s. But the much-loved comedian and actor, who recently turned 44, is now comfortable with the idea of being a middle-aged man.
"It was only after three years that it sunk in," he says. "Before, I still had that teenage feeling that there was lots of time to do the things I wanted to do. Then suddenly I found myself grunting as I got out of a low chair, and you think, hold on, I'm not 17 any more, I've got to get on with stuff.
Sometimes I worry a lot about this, about whether myself at 40 is a betrayal of what I hoped I would be when I was 20. When I was 20 I certainly thought I'd have opened the batting for England by now, and I'd have climbed Everest and written a great cello concerto. I've done none of those things and therefore I've let the side down."
Laurie is joking of course. He can hardly describe himself as an underachiever. As well as being a popular television star, he's made a successful crossover into film, starring in hits like Maybe Baby and the Stuart Little films. He's also an accomplished musician and successful novelist.
But given his worries it's perhaps fitting that he makes his return to British television in a comedy drama on the very subject of life in your 40s.
In Fortysomething he stars as troubled GP Paul Slippery, an anxious husband and father who is beset by the tribulations of oncoming middle age and feeling increasingly confused by his family.
Slippery struggles to understand the sexual shenanigans and rivalries of his three sons. His long-suffering wife Estelle, played by Four Weddings And A Funeral's Anna Chancellor, has decided to go back to work. Worst of all, he can't remember when he last had sex.
"It's a jolly, farcical comedy," says Laurie, "but it does have underneath it an anxiety about when you reach this point in your life - your children are growing up, you are established in your career and then you ask now what? What am I here for?"
Like Slippery, Laurie is married (to Jo, a former theatre administrator) with three kids - Charlie, 14, Bill, 12, and nine-year-old Rebecca. But the actor laughs off any comparison with his character.
"My experiences wouldn't make a six hour television show for a start," he says. "I suppose I'm more bemused rather than panicked. I'm not as neurotic as Paul. Friends of mine might disagree but I think of myself as vaguely puzzled by life rather than neurotic.
"Also my own children are younger than Slippery's. I've still got the teenage years to come. But I'm just starting to get a glimmer of it, with the odd door slamming starting to raise its head."
The production of the series seems to have been as troubled as the family it was portraying, with two directors leaving just as filming began.
"There's a variety of reasons and they're a miure of logistical, practical and artistic," says Laurie. "But who knows? Certainly I don't know, all of it happened without my involvement or knowledge and it was slightly alarming. When you see the captain of your ship jumping past your porthole it's slightly worrying."
But the unexpected departure of the directors offered up a chance for Laurie to dabble in another area of showbiz that he's only briefly touched on before - directing. At the suggestion of the show's producers, Laurie directed the first three episodes of the series, but he didn't adapt to the challenge well.
"I wouldn't recommend it," he says. "It was insane and very misguided. It was rewarding in some ways and certainly exciting but only in the same way that a car crash is exciting.
"I did it because the very stupidity of it made it appealing. If it had been easier, if someone had said I had three months to prepare and I could change whatever I wanted, I probably would have said no. There was something about the very insanity of it that made me say yes."
What made the challenge even more difficult for Laurie was that at one point he had to both act and direct in the nude.
"Slippery is following his wife out into the street wearing a towel, keen to discuss matters of a sexual nature," explains Laurie, "and a passing dog - you know how this happens, it's happened to all of us - a passing dog steals the towel.
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