Age: 67
male
James Hugh Calum Laurie CBE (born June 11, 1959), known professionally as Hugh Laurie, is an English actor, director, singer, musician, comedian, and author. He is known for portraying the title character on the Fox medical drama series House (2004–2012), for which he received two Golden Globe Awards and nominations for numerous other awards. He was listed in the 2011 Guinness World Records as the most watched leading man on television and was one of the highest-paid actors in a television drama, earning £250,000 ($409,000) per episode of House. His other television credits include arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper in the miniseries The Night Manager (2016), for which he won his third Golden Globe Award, and Senator Tom James in the HBO sitcom Veep (2012–2019), for which he received his 10th Emmy Award nomination. Forced to abandon rowing during a bout of glandular fever, he joined the Cambridge Footlights, a university dramatic club that has produced many well-known actors and comedians. There he met Emma Thompson, with whom he had a romantic relationship, which later ended yet they remain good friends. 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 the years 2121 AD, several decades after humanity ("Terrans") has expanded its presence beyond Earth, terraforming and colonizing Venus and Mars. These three planets are "the Homeworlds", the core first of the Terran interplanetary state and later of Neosapien Commonwealth. Not all Terrans are affiliated with the Homeworlds, however: the Pirate Clans, descendants of Terran criminals exiled to the Outer Planets who live off looted Homeworlds' space freighters, are a major independent faction. The Earth Congress dispatches the entire Exofleet, humanity's space-based military, to counter the Pirate threat. With a war with the Pirate Clans looming, an uprising begins among the Neosapiens, an artificial humanoid race coexisting with Terrans. The Neosapiens were used primarily as slaves during the colonization of Mars and Venus and therefore have been engineered to be physically stronger and better adapted to hostile environments than humans. Their mistreatment by Terrans led to the First Neosapien Revolt fifty years earlier, which was mercilessly crushed but had brought some positive changes into their lives. Still not content with his fate, the Neosapien Governor of Mars, Phaeton, sets a new insurrection, codenamed "Operation [Neosapien] Destiny", in motion as soon as the Exofleet leaves to chase after the Pirate Clans. The absence of the Exofleet is also a part of Phaeton's plan as it enables the Neosapiens' capture of the Homeworlds without much effort.
