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.
On a blustery winter night in London, Sophie Akehurst stands behind the counter of the Savoy’s Baufort Bar. An enigmatic Russian accompanied by a retinue of armed bodyguards arrives, orders a drink which he doesn’t touch and leaves behind a crumpled copy of the New York Times. Before Sophie can clear it away, an equally mysterious guest picks up the newspaper and vanishes out of sight. Unaware that she has inadvertently stumbled into a sprawling counter-intelligence operation against the top echelons of the Russian mafia, Sophie becomes a target. Soon she finds herself in the power of Alexei Ronov, an elusive baron of the secret arms trade who is about to join the elite circle of men who rule over the world’s most potent criminal empire. But Ronov proves himself to be a man of many faces – and just as many secrets. And in a world of high-stakes power games, such secrets can lead to the unlikeliest of alliances.
