Maybe Baby sceencap gallery

Maybe Baby Region 2 DVD interview screencaps

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A few Maybe Baby video clips featuring commentary by Ben Elton and Hugh Laurie

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It's in her kiss; Joely Richardson reveals how she taught Mel Gibson and Hugh Laurie to snog.(Features)

Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); 6/2/2000; Synnot, Siobhan

HE'S one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and has millions of women worldwide fantasising about him.

But, according to actress Joely Richardson, heart-throb Mel Gibson needed a few tips when it came to filming romantic scenes.

Joely, a member of the famous Redgrave acting dynasty, revealed Mel took some encouragement to perfect his kissing in his next blockbuster, The Patriot.

Joely, 35, said: "There was this big build up and I thought he'd be an old pro. But he wasn't - he was really uncertain about what to do.

"So I had to tell him: `Be like Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind'."

The striking blonde also had to reassure Hugh Laurie, her co-star in Ben Elton's new film Maybe Baby - out this week - during filming of their love scenes.

Joely said: "I can't understand why he isn't more confident about himself. He says it's because he's English, but I don't think that's enough of a reason."

With three films on release, including Return To Me with David Duchovny, the future is looking bright for Joely.

The daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and Oscar-winning film and stage director Tony Richardson, she shot to fame in the BBC's infamous dramatisation of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The programme attracted more attention for its nudity scenes than its quality, with Joely's figure making regular appearances.

She also hit the headlines following her affair with producer Archie Stirling, then husband of former Avengers star Diana Rigg.

But now Joely has moved from sexpot to love interest in her string of new films.

In Gibson's blockbuster The Patriot - said to be an American Braveheart - Joely plays his lady love.

Like her other leading men Hugh Laurie and David Duchovny, Mel is famous for his sense of humour.

Joely revealed: "Mel has the broadest sense of humour.

"If you had a big scene he would love to surprise you - such as by dropping his trousers.

"But really I liked him when he wasn't telling jokes because he is such a good listener. I really warmed to him then."

Duchovny described Joely as a "lovely lady" and she returned the compliment - while giggling that she has never watched his show, The X- Files.

She said: "Every day working with him was hysterical. He's got such a dry sense of humour."

Besides sharing the screen with Mel, David and the newly-minted sex symbol Hugh Laurie in Maybe Baby, off- screen Joely has been linked to some of entertainment's hottest men.

Most recently, she was out and about with Robbie Williams - who is nine years her junior. But the cheeky boy of pop was noticeably absent from her side when she arrived for the recent European premiere of Return To Me, amid rumours that the relationship fizzled out before he bought a new house to be closer to Joely.

Not that the blonde actress was short of admirers in her dramatic leather outfit.

Relaxed and easy-going company, Joely is surprisingly down to earth for acting royalty.

She grew up surrounded by film people on movie sets across the world.

By the age of 18, she had followed her actress sister Natasha, her mother and grandfather Michael Redgrave onto the stage.

With her mother's sculpted looks, Joely's 1985 film debut in Wetherby was inevitable - she played her mum's character in a flashback.

Now Joely is a mother herself.

Her daughter Daisy, eight, is the only child from her marriage to film producer Tim Bevan, which ended almost three years ago. And, according to the family, little Daisy is already showing signs of the Redgrave talent.

But Joely feels that her background as a member of Britain's most famous acting family has often been more of a handicap than a help.

She said: "There's no way I've got the work I'm getting because of my family. If anything, it's the reverse."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday

Hugh must grin and bare it; He is this year's most unlikely sex symbol but the star of Maybe Baby was terrified at having to strip for the cameras.

Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); 6/2/2000; Synnot, Siobhan

RUBBER-FACED Hugh Laurie is many things - funny certainly, a talented musician too. But a sex symbol? Even Hugh is a little embarrassed by that one.

In his latest role, however, in new comedy Maybe Baby, he does take on a new appeal - and more than a few female fans have swooned as they left the cinema after preview screenings.

Hugh plays Sam, a hard-working husband who is devoted to his wife Lucy, but more than a little unsure when it comes to the subject of having children.

It's a role that writer and comedian Ben Elton says he penned especially for pal Hugh when he adapted his hit novel Inconceivable for the big screen.

The scriptwriter said: "Girls love him. Hugh is a very attractive, sexy, thoughtful man."

Former girlfriend Emma Thompson, who appears with him in Maybe Baby, also confirms that Hugh is "very, very loveable".

But such comments make Hugh Laurie very, very bashful.

In real life, he says he finds it so difficult to watch emotional scenes that he even turns his head away from couples kissing on TV.

So his worst nightmare was discovering that on the first day on set, he and his leading lady Joely Richardson were going to have to spend the whole day performing an energetic sex scene.

He said: "Taking your trousers off in front of an entire film crew is always rather awkward because you are so literally exposed.

"Joely was being very supportive, and tried to relax me, but I said `Look, I've only just got used to doing this kind of thing in front of one person'."

The 6ft2ins actor says that it's probably the bravest thing he's done on screen. He said: "After all, it's not something other people do in front of you in real life.

"We might watch people having an argument or running down a street. But if they started taking their clothes off and having sex in front of you, I'm out of the door pretty sharpish. It happened to me once when I was sharing a tent with Dutch hippies in Morocco.

"It wasn't an issue for them, but it was for me. So I went for an incredibly long walk.

"Even then, it was not long enough as it turns out because I arrived back in time for the second bout. And I had walked an awful long way."

Working on Maybe Baby, which is released today, was the first time Hugh, 40, had played a romantic role since he and wife Jo hit a crisis in their own relationship two years ago.

While filming a children's film, The Place Of Lions, he became involved with the director, Audrey Cooke, in South Africa.

When people started to gossip, Hugh dashed back to England to tell his wife of 11 years. Now, he says, they're back on track and he is "very much" back at home with Jo and their children Charlie, 11, Bill, nine, and six-year-old Rebecca.

But he won't be drawn into commenting any further. He said: "Nothing I can say will make it any better, so it's best I say nothing."

But he does confirm that they intend to stay together. And he says that the family have no problems watching his love scenes with Joely in the new film. They know he's only playing it for laughs.

He said: "My wife read the script and there was no mention made. And one time I had to kiss Joely and one of my sons was watching and he just looked appalled, which is great. I'm now at the stage where I can embarrass him."

Acting may be his bread-and-butter, but it seems that music is Hugh's real love. He has composed and recorded numerous original songs. These talents are on display in Jeeves And Wooster and A Bit Of Fry And Laurie.

He also plays keyboards in Poor White Trash, a soul/R&B band with Lenny Henry and Ben Elton's wife, Sophie.

This most English of men is, in fact, the son of Scottish parents.

His mother, Patricia, was a housewife and sometime writer - but her relationship with Hugh was troubled.

Patricia suffered black, despairing moods for months, which cast a shadow over Hugh and his two older sisters and brother. She died of motor neurone disease when Hugh was 29, before they had a chance to "clear the air".

He said: "I don't know if she was clinically depressed, but she certainly had moods.

"When she was in a good mood, she was such a joy. But she used to get very angry with me. I think she found me a disappointment in many ways."

Hugh has, he admits, inherited his mother's ability to sulk for months, which has strained his relationship with his own family.

His relationship with his father, "Ran" Laurie, was less complicated. He was a GP, but also a champion rower who won Olympic gold.

Hugh followed in his footsteps and rowed for Cambridge University, but he had to give up the sport due to injury.

He considered joining the Army or the Hong Kong police - "very nice shorts" - but instead tried his luck at acting.

On a whim, he decided to audition for acclaimed drama group Footlights and, after meeting Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery there, he never looked back.

It was Thompson who introduced Hugh to his comedy partner Stephen Fry and they started working as a double act.

Together, they became two of Britain's best-known satirical wits in their Eighties TV sketch show A Bit Of Fry And Laurie.

They then opted for a spot of comedy drama in their charming adaptation of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books. But their best-known big-screen performance was in Peter's Friends, Kenneth Branagh's bittersweet 1992 drama which saw a group of old Cambridge friends (sound familiar?) meet up 10 years after they left university.

Hugh's touching performance as a downtrodden husband who had lost a baby to cot death was particularly memorable.

After receiving excellent reviews for the role, he went on to take a small part in Sense And Sensibility, alongside Hugh Grant and, yet again, Emma Thompson.

Bizarrely, he then took a part in Spiceworld: The Movie with the Spice Girls.

But there was at least safety in the sheer numbers of other well-known stars making cameo appearances and the odd choice didn't entirely wreck his streetcred.

Fans in the UK will next see Hugh playing an American father in Stuart Little, an enchanting children's film which sees Michael J Fox provide the voice of a charismatic mouse adopted by Hugh's family.

The film has already thrilled America's kids and made millions of dollars at the box office.
And for those who remember the Hugh Laurie of the old days, there is always the possibility of a reunion with Stephen Fry.

The pair have a close bond and remained friends throughout Fry's nervous breakdown that led him to abruptly quit his West End play and Britain.

Hugh admits he was initially miffed that his friend did not call him in his time of crisis, but he now understands why.

He said: "He didn't confide in me before he went, which was sort of hurtful at the time.

"But I kind of know why he didn't, because he knew what I would say which would have been something along the lines of `get a hold of yourself man' and you can get yourself into a state of mind where you actually don't want to be told.

"You come to a decision and don't want anything to get in the way of it.

"But it was a bit upsetting at the time, because he was obviously in such distress.

"And you think well, what's the point of knowing someone for the best part of 15 years and spending 10 hours a day together, if you can't help at a time like that?"

It seems that Stephen's problem was simple - he was lonely.

Now the openly gay star is in love - but that hasn't broken up his old friendship with Hugh.

Stephen confides in Hugh and his wife - and Laurie certainly doesn't rule out the prospect of a reunion on screen.

Hugh added: "We still see a lot of Stephen.

"And if I got him into a room and was stern with him, I'm sure he would agree to do something, because we always talk. We're great talkers."

COPYRIGHT 2000 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday

I was miserable, self-absorbed and selfish until I finally faced up to the truth of my depression; Scene & Heard: Hugh Laurie, the unlikely star of BBC1's Spooks, speaks candidly about his family, his work and the therapy that has changed his life.

The Evening Standard (London, England); 6/13/2002; Jory, Amy

Byline: AMY JORY

HUGH LAURIE has practically cornered the market in playing cheery upper-class characters - whether bumbling his way through numerous Blackadder series; as Bertie Wooster, or even, this week, as the rather pompous and imperious MI6 mandarin battling for supremacy with his MI5 counterparts in the BBC spy drama series, Spooks.

So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the comedy actor has suffered so severely from black moods and depression that he has spent two years in psychotherapy and credits the experience with changing his life.

It's rare enough to find Laurie a willing interviewee, rarer still to find him so open about the hidden torment that has so altered his life.

"It affected everything - my family and friends. I was a pain in the arse to have around. I was miserable and self-absorbed. It's actually selfish to be depressed and not try and do anything about it," he says.

"I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give."

He accepts that his wife, Jo, and three children, Charlie, 13, Bill, 11, and eight-year-old Rebecca, were affected by his depression. "I diagnosed myself as being depressed and decided I would try and sort it out. I don't know enough about the illness to say whether it was clinical, but it was certainly more than feeling a bit sad. It went on for long periods of time and had all the other symptoms, like lethargy and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning."

At the time, a few years ago, the depression was crippling. "I can remember the moment when I realised I had a problem. I was doing this stockcar race for charity somewhere in the East End. But in the middle of the race, with cars exploding and turning over - life or death - it suddenly hit me that I was bored.

"I thought: 'This can't be right. I should either be hating it with every fibre of my being or loving it, because this is an extreme experience.' I realised this was the state of mind of a depressed person."

He sought help the very next day: "A friend recommended a fantastic lady therapist and I found it incredibly helpful. Truth is a bit scary, but I think everyone should have a go. I feel very much more at peace."

Reluctantly, he admits that the depression may have been connected to his brief extramarital affair with a film director with whom he once worked, but he does not want to go into any details.

"It possibly was connected. But I don't remember." His 13-year marriage survived the crisis and is stronger than ever. "It's terrific, and I'm very lucky. I'm so much happier now and more accepting of things. I used to get consumed with things that were in the past. I saw a million different versions of who I could have been and all of them were better: 'Why didn't I do this?
Why didn't I do that?'" Laurie, whose father was a GP in Oxford, has just turned 43 and seems always to portray himself selfdeprecatingly. He also has an extraordinary inability to value his achievements.

He has been head of house at Eton, an oarsman for Cambridge in the 1980 Boat Race, president of Footlights and co-star with Stephen Fry in Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. He is also the author of a thriller hailed as "superb" and is a fine pianist. So many gifts, and such good fortune could arouse resentment, of course. "Oh, I've had a very ordinary life," he mumbles. It is good fortune, in fact, that seems to have been the catalyst that made Laurie miserable and drove him to therapy.

"It wasn't that I couldn't talk about my problems," he says, "I used to bore my friends stiff. But because money has changed hands, I don't feel I have to entertain or make myself sound better than I am." In his depressed moods, he can, he says, "glower for hours. I'm amazed that people put up with it. I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.'' Dissatisfaction with his achievements seems to be Laurie's problem.

He always thinks there is something else he should be doing, some other activity that would make him happier.

Having children, he says, has diverted him a little.

"They do make you less egotistical," he says. "I still manage to think about myself 98 per cent of the time, but at least there is a little window where others can impinge."

AS he shuffles his 6ft 2in frame in the chair, Laurie still looks windswept and ruddy-cheeked from riding his BMW motorbike into the West End. "People probably expect me to turn up in a Bentley with a shooting stick," he grins, parodying his posh image as an upper-class toff. He is clearly uneasy about the reaction he gets from being wellknown: "I don't take off my helmet a lot of the time - that's one of the really good things about riding a bike. I can go all over the place and no one knows who I am."

While trying to retain some degree of anonymity, Laurie can't get away from his privileged background. He speaks in a clipped, upperclass accent but seems almost apologetic that his three children go to private schools. He also possesses that very English embarrassment when it comes to sex, and begins to blush as he describes a recent episode at home, when his son Charlie came into the living room as Laurie and Jo, a former theatre administrator, were watching a graphic sex scene on television.

"It's the way that your children always arrive in the doorway at that moment. Why do we get embarrassed by that kind of thing?"

Yet Laurie stripped off for love scenes in Ben Elton's debut movie about infertility, Maybe Baby. "I was only allowed to wear a sock," he says.

"But the only way to do the shot was to be naked. It's been my worst nightmare ever since the showers at school - I couldn't believe I was living it."

Although he fights hard to protect his private life and personality away from the cameras, most of the British stars who have worked with Laurie - and subsequently become friends - fall over themselves in their admiration for him.

"He is very lovable," says Emma Thompson, who was, many years ago, his girlfriend, and has been his friend for more than two decades. "He is one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy - like a well-hung eel."

"He's a remarkable man to know," says his great friend Stephen Fry. "I owe him everything. He's the real thing. Gifted, phenomenally intelligent, and wise." Ben Elton, who has known Laurie for nearly 20 years, cast him in Maybe Baby because: "I always felt with Hugh that there was a secret waiting to be let out. He thinks a great deal. He is not good at selling himself.

Of course, he's terrific at comedy, playing the amiables and idiots, but those who know him well, and not that many do, know that as well as doubt and insecurity he has great inner strength, huge depth and thoughtfulness.'' Laurie is, to anyone looking at his life from the outside, a success, yet he grimaces every time this word is said.

"I've been lucky and was given all the advantages in life, though I fear my background is somewhat timid, dull and middleclass, compared with, say, Stephen (Fry)." Laurie grew up in a comfortable family, six years younger than his next sibling, a brother to whom he wasn't particularly close. He was loved and cared for. "Lovely parents, lovely sisters and brothers. But I was sort of an only child, because I was so much the youngest. Sort of alone.

"I did have problems with my mother, and she with me. I was an awkward and frustrating child. She had very high expectations of me.

Long after I had stopped being a child, I heard from my sisters that I was the apple of her eye, her golden boy, but I didn' t realise it at the time. I knew she had high expectations, which I constantly disappointed.'' Real depression, " heavyweight unhapp iness", began in his late teens and continued despite success, marriage and fatherhood.

Perhaps it is a chemical imbalance, he says, although he will not take drugs for it (once, he admits shamefacedly, he did resort to St John's Wort).

He hates the idea of drugs that will alter him, and anyway, he is not convinced that he wants to be altered.

WORK seems to be Laurie's most obvious escape from those dark clouds, and he has been in the United States recently to put the finishing touches to Stuart Little II, the follow-up to the Hollywood children's movie about an animated mouse, which was a surprise box-office hit two years ago. "I think it's even funnier than the first one," he says of the sequel in which he and Geena Davis play a patrician couple living in Manhattan.

Apart from his other film work, which includes a British romantic comedy, called The Girl From Rio, he is also trying to write his second novel, Paper Soldier, and has been busy adapting his debut novel, The Gun Seller, for the screen.

The Gun Seller took the mickey out of the 007 genre, but Laurie had to abandon his screenplay for John Malkovich's production company because the story involved terrorism: "It's at the bottom of the pile now.

I was working on it for about two years, which is a shame, but people lost a lot more than I did, so it's one of those things."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Solo Syndication Limited

I don't cry .. but my baby twins just made me weep for joy!; BEN ELTON talks to Jan Moir about the torment that led to him becoming a dad.(News)


Sunday Mail (Glasgow, Scotland); 10/10/1999; Moir, Jan

OH, FORGET the birth of his baby twins, the new novel and the film he's just directed. Ben Elton wants to discuss something that's much more important.

His PANTS. Sometimes he wears jockey shorts, occasionally some "thousand- wash grey" Y-fronts, but he never wears boxers because they crinkle, and life is too short to iron pants.

Naturally, Ben's social conscience stops him from asking his wife or anyone else to iron them.
"It's just not on," he says.

He doesn't know what colour he's wearing today, but I do. Under-neath the pale, extra- lightweight trousers ("24 quid from a camping shop") which he wears to soothe a skin condition, I spy a pair of smart, navy blue knicks.

"What colour are yours?" he asks the photographer. "Green Calvin Kleins," he says.
"Ooo," says Ben. "So you favour an attractive underpant? Interesting."

His latest novel, Inconceivable, is about a married couple - Sam and Lucy - who embark on a course of IVF treatments in an attempt to have a baby.

Sam works in TV comedy and has the skin complaint psoriasis, while Lucy is a theatrical agent.
In real life, Ben works in TV comedy and has psoriasis, while his wife, Sophie Gare, is a musician.

The Eltons - who met in 1987 and married in 1994 - have also had IVF treatment.
THIS is, admits Elton, his most personal book so far, although he is at pains to point out that it is fiction.

"My wife and I have been through IVF and I know a lot about it, but Sam and Lucy are not Ben and Sophie.

"For a start, I'm more relaxed than Sam, and he's more of a twit than me."

After trying for a baby for many years, the Eltons began treatment at London hospitals in 1997.
Sophie became pregnant third time lucky, the cause of much rejoicing. "It was a monumental step for us, enough to celebrate big time," says Ben.

"I had a bottle of champ and Soph had just a sip of champ for obvious reasons."
How funny that even though Elton left his Thatcher-bashing, Right-wing lashing persona back in the 80s - along with the shiny suit and the motor-mouth delivery - he still can't bring himself to say `champagne'.

HE'S one of Britain's highest-paid writers - he created TV's Blackadder and The Young Ones - and his past five novels have been best-sellers and his three plays hits.

But he still frets about taking taxis while others have to walk.

Still, he didn't feel guilty at being able to afford fertility treatment.

"Everything in life is a compromise," he says. "The fact I have a home when other people sit on doorsteps is a compromise.

"We were very lucky; we had the money, but I do feel heartbroken for couples who can't afford it."

Ben seems as mellow and happy and affable as could be.

Apart from his family joy, he's just completed directing Maybe Baby - the film of Inconceivable, for which he also wrote the screenplay, starring Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. It's being touted as next year's Notting Hill.

"Hugh is so sexy," he says. "I always knew there was a romantic lead deep inside him.
"He has deep blue eyes, he's muscular. I've got him playing piano in a T-shirt with those big biceps bulging."

Hugh Laurie? The one with the pencil neck?

"He looks fantastic. He and Joely are an exquisite couple. I think they're Britain's answer to Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith," says Elton, although I think he means Meg Ryan.

Directing was clearly a thrill for Ben, who says: "Filming is all about love. You have to love the people you work with and the project you are working on.

"Then, out of the blue there is even bigger love happening - double trouble, two babies, instant family."

ALTHOUGH Sophie became pregnant after Elton had finished writing Inconceivable, much of what happened to Sam and Lucy happened to them.

He admits he often felt like a "freak, a sad act sitting there with a load of other sad acts", and his relationship was put under considerable strain by the process of trying to conceive.

"That book is about what can happen when you want something so much you risk losing what you already have."

Typically, he insists the whole process was much tougher for her. Charlotte and Albert - Lottie and Bert - were born nine weeks premature and weighed only four pounds each.

When they were born, he didn't experience the blinding emotional high he expected, but laughed because they looked so funny.

In this, he's like his fictional character, Sam, who observes that "all babies start off looking like the last tomato in the fridge".

While his wife fell instantly in love with the twins, Elton's reaction was more complex.
"Look, I'm won't pretend I went aaaaaahh! when I first saw them. I love them deeply and I will do anything for their happiness and well-being, but there has been no Dama- scene moment for me."

His children were hooked up on tubes and drips for the first weeks - little Bert even had a drip needle going into his head, protected by a plastic cup.

DAD says: "Like a tiny Tommy Cooper fez. He looked like a performing monkey. I'm sorry, but it was funny."

Despite the laughs, and Elton's protests that he's not "soppy" or "mushy", on the day doctors removed the last of the drips and the twins first began to fend for themselves, he stood by their cots and just wept.

"I don't cry much in life, but the eyes prickled on that one."

Even Ben Elton, the most articulate of men, finds himself stumbling to explain the enchantment of his miracle.

"I do feel different being a dad, but not as much yet as I believe I will," he says.

After their second IVF failure, he'd privately resigned himself to the view that they'd never have a baby - although they tried five times. Their setbacks were sad and upsetting, and they coped by "getting drunk and smoking 20 fags".

Although all hope was not lost, they spoke of adoption or of working for children's charities; channelling their parental desires into a more expansive wish to "do good" in the world.
Ben's been through the most tormented time imaginable, yet he's emerged triumphant and happy, proclaiming this is the "greatest year of my life".

Will he now sit back, smell the roses and congratulate himself on his good fortune?
"I did have some tough times over this," he finally admits."But at least I never had to sit in a dole queue."

COPYRIGHT 1999 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday

YOU'VE GOT MAIL: Hugh Laurie Answers all your e-mails.


The Mirror (London, England); 6/28/2003

He first came to our attention in the early-1980s with the TV sketch show A Bit Of Fry And Laurie (pictured top right), a comedy duo formed with Hugh's Cambridge University friend Stephen Fry. Since then, his appearances have included Blackadder, Jeeves And Wooster, and the hugely successful Stuart Little films. He's also written a novel and is now about to star in the ITV1 comedy drama Fortysomething. Hugh, 43, lives in London with his wife of 13 years, Jo, a former theatre administrator and their children, Charlie, 13, Bill, 11, and Rebecca, eight. Here Sarah Moolla puts your questions to him.

What's your first memory? Lewis, via e-mail

It's being in a black shiny pram and I'm holding a red toy train.

What were your initial impressions of Stephen Fry? Catherine Stephens, Maidstone, Kent

Tall with a bent nose and very funny. I first saw him on stage when he was 19. Stephen played an old man, but he was actually like that off stage. He's the only person I know who has got younger with time.

Did you ever take part in the Boat Race? Justine, via e-mail

Yes, in 1980. We lost by five feet. I don't do it any more as it's a miserable sport, very hard work and you're facing the wrong way.

Will there be any more Blackadder? Paul O'Connor, Bethnal Green, East London

I wish there would, but I don't think so unless Rowan loses all his money and is forced to do so. Also, the writers, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, decided they'd had enough. I do miss it though.

How does Hollywood compare to filming in Britain? Samantha Baker, Congleton, Cheshire

Hollywood has better weather, better lunches, bigger trailers and 10 times more money. I enjoyed it all immensely. For the first Stuart Little, the Central Park set was about the same size as the real Central Park. Had that been done in Britain, it would've been one lamppost and a bin liner. I don't think there will be anymore Stuart Little because, even though the second film was better, it didn't do as well.

What happened to the film you were meant to do with Denise Van Outen? Bryony Clarke Stoke,Staffs

I don't exactly know. I imagine it had funding problems.

Did you find the nude scenes difficult in Maybe, Baby? Anne-Marie Jones, via e-mail

Probably not as difficult as the crew did - they're the ones who had to look at me. I have another nude scene in Fortysomething. It lasts two seconds but it felt like a lifetime.

Would you encourage your children to become actors? Clare Goodwin, via e-mail

They like drama classes at the moment although I think that's mainly because it's not maths. But I wouldn't encourage them to be actors. My youngest son, Bill, auditioned for one of the Harry Potter films but, at 10, he was too young for the intended role. I have to admit I was relieved it didn't go any further.

Which comedians make you laugh? Tom Buckingham, Ludham, Norfolk

Ricky Gervais and Ali G are both brilliant but I think we should all bow down to the genius of Johnny Vegas.

Are you writing any more novels? Mrs Dylis Burnham, via e-mail

I'm on my second book now and I'm finding it quite hard. I enjoyed writing the first one because it was just for pleasure. Now people are expecting it I'm quite nervous. This one will also be a thriller featuring guns and car chases. I'd like to write a serious book but I'm not grown up enough.

A lot has been written about your depression. Is it something you can ever overcome? Krishan, via e-mail

Well, I only mentioned it once in an interview a long time ago yet it keeps being written about. I've promised my wife not to talk about it anymore because if I do I get letters asking for help and that's not something I'm qualified to give. I wish I could say eating goat's cheese or chanting helps, but I don't have any answers.

How do you cope with being recognised? Sarah Turner, Brampton, Cumbria

A great side-effect of being a motorcyclist is I don't get recognised under my helmet. Otherwise, the sort of people who approach me are always very pleasant.

Describe your ideal day. Ruth, via e-mail

It would start with a full English breakfast, then I'd go to a motorcycle shop to test ride their newest, shiniest, stupidest bike. I'd go to Prague and, en route, have lunch in a motorway cafe, eaten outside so I can hear the tick, tick of hot metal. Then I'd come home and have a Chinese dinner with the wife and our friends before playing the piano brilliantly with a group of musicians.

COPYRIGHT 2003 MGN LTD

Film: Five things you didn't know about... Hugh Laurie.

The Mirror (London, England); 6/2/2000

Following his triumphant role in Hollywood's surprise smash hit Stuart Little, Hugh appears in Ben Elton's first feature film, Maybe Baby, with Joely Richardson. He plays a BBC scriptwriter with infertility problems. Here are five little-known facts about Hugh.

1 Hugh's father won three Boat Races for Cambridge University and a gold rowing medal for his country at the 1948 Olympics. When he went to Cambridge, Hugh attempted to follow in his dad's wake and made the 1980 Boat Race team. Cambridge came second and lost by ten feet in the closest finish this century.

2 Despite his cheery on-screen persona, Hugh suffers from black moods and depression. To cope with the problem he sees a psychotherapist. He admits to an overriding fear of failure but concedes he has a tendency to wallow in melancholia. "I'm happier when I know I'm on my way back to misery," he says.

3 Hugh, 41, has been married to Jo for 11 years. They have three children and live in North London. When not working, he rides his beloved motorbike and keeps fit by jogging around the parks of Primrose Hill.

4 Eton-educated Hugh moved in sparkling circles when he attended Cambridge's Selwyn College. He joined the university's famous Footlights revue where he met his future comedy partner Stephen Fry, as well as Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson. Emma became Hugh's girlfriend and they still remain good friends. He is planning further TV work with Fry.

5 Hugh really wants to make it as a writer. His first novel, The Gun Seller, took the mickey out of the 007 genre. Now he's working on his second book. "They say the second one is the hardest," he says. "So I thought about skipping it and going straight to the third. But apparently you're not allowed to do that." Maybe Baby opens this week

COPYRIGHT 2000 MGN LTD

AT THE MOVIES Hugh goes there . . ?

The Birmingham Post (England); 7/22/2000; Davies, Mike

A few weeks ago Hugh Laurie was busy plugging Ben Elton's directorial debut Maybe Baby.

Now he's talking up his co-starring role in Stuart Little, a film made well before Elton's and which opened in the States last year but is only now hitting the UK.

You can understand if he's a bit confused about his bearings. But no more perplexed about how on earth he wound up in Stuart Little in the first place. 'I don't even know how I got the job.

'With 101 Dalmatians it was a case of auditioning like everyone else. I had to work really hard for it. This one they just asked me. It was probably a typing error. It's not as if I'm really known over there. Blackadder's popular on cable, but I was only in 12 of those.

'And there's the P G Wodehouse I guess. But basically I'm not known at all. I don't even know what they were looking for. Was it 'find me some English guy' or 'let's have this guy, oh he's English is he'?

'They probably just wanted someone tall to play opposite Geena Davis. Most Americans aren't tall. They've got big heads but tiny bodies. Like tadpoles.'

Of course, being relatively unknown, there were no expectations to be Hugh Laurie in the same way as there are over here.

'Absolutely none. You are more free to be whatever the part demands there. Unlike here now where all comics seem to do is straight acting.

'Drama producers aren't interested in proper actors anymore, they just want to cast comedians. It's got so 'interesting casting' isn't interesting any more. But in fact, because I was worried about the accent, I decided it would be easier to be American the whole time rather than just try and go in and out of it.

'Also, Americans have no tolerance for foreign accents. They just don't understand what you're saying. So, if you're going to buy milk or a newspaper, it's easier to be American than go through the 'you what, you what, you wanna what?' routine.

'So most people didn't even know I was English. Or that's what I like to think.'

But although the film's massive success has increased his profile in Hollywood, Laurie has absolutely no intentions of following the likes of Craig Ferguson out to California.

'None at all. If you're an actor and you want to do films then, because it so happens that Americans control films worldwide, then sooner or later you will have to take their filthy coin. Albeit a very large coin.

'But while there may be more opportunities, I have no plans to move there. I've got three children and it would be a big wrench to say 'come on, we're going to California, there's gold in them thar hills'. Especially if there may not be and a year later we'd have to come back, stony broke.'

Meanwhile, currently into work on his second novel, Laurie's just finished writing the screenplay adaptation of his first, The Gun Seller.

'I sold the rights to a producer who then sold them to a studio who then asked me to write the screenplay.

'So, there I was, the cheque virtually still in my hand thinking, 'I've sold the rights and it just won't work' and then they come and ask me to do it and I have to say, 'yeh, right, easy'. In fact it's proven bloody difficult.'

Any chance he'll star in it as well? 'In some fantasy world I suppose I did write the character for myself. But the reality is that it's a big expensive film with a lot of explosions and it's going to need a big American star. A tadpole.'

COPYRIGHT 2000 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd

New Zealand Herald

Hugh Laurie - English twit develops some muscle.
 
Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson are desperate for a child in Maybe Baby.
 
30.08.2000
 
By HELEN BARLOW

Actors don't come much more English than reserved, diffident, ever-so-polite Hugh Laurie.
Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he speaks with perfect diction. And he specialises in that self-deprecating humour the English do best.

It was at university that he began his performing career, teaming up for comedy revues with Emma Thompson, with whom he had a brief affair.

Two decades later, he had his biggest success with a father-to-a-mouse role in Stuart Little.

Laurie then returned to his comedy roots with Maybe Baby, reuniting with another of his earlier collaborators, comedian Ben Elton.

Maybe Baby was inspired by the experiences of Elton and his wife as they tried to get pregnant using the IVF programme.

"There are lots of sex scenes," Laurie admits. "I'd never done anything resembling a bed scene in my life before. I was losing my film virginity, as it were, and that was a very strange experience.

"It felt hysterical when we were doing it, but some bits were very difficult, having to let go when the camera's rolling. Being English, it's hard to let go and to trust that it's going to be all right. It's scary."

Elton, who had co-written Blackadder and Mr Bean with Richard Curtis, saw Maybe Baby (which is based on his book, Inconceivable) as a chance to replicate the winning formula of Curtis' Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.

Maybe Baby, his first film as director, also features Rowan Atkinson, as a gynaecologist, and Emma Thompson, as a New Age health freak.

While we might remember Laurie from Blackadder, in Britain it was Jeeves and Wooster, a series with his best friend, Stephen Fry, that made him a household name.

Laurie is recognisable from a wide range of movies, too, although he never really stood out until Stuart Little.

His first major role was in Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends, and he had small parts in Plenty, Sense and Sensibility, The Borrowers, Spiceworld and The Man in The Iron Mask.

He played Jessica Lange's pompous brother-in-law in Cousin Bette, and was dastardly as an evil dognapper in 101 Dalmatians. Then came Stuart Little, and success that was something of a surprise.

"I'd done 101 Dalmatians the year before and I'd thought that was a bit strange," says Laurie.

"I hadn't really seen myself doing this kind of family film so I was in two minds about doing another.

"Then they said, 'How do you fancy working with Geena Davis?' That was the big attraction, the Geena Davis thing."

The fact that Laurie is 1.8m helped in his casting alongside the athletic, long-limbed actress.

A former champion oarsman, the 41-year-old is surprisingly muscular for someone who always seems to be playing a weedy Brit.

And there's plenty of his physique on display in Maybe Baby. The story requires him to have sex whenever his wife (Joely Richardson) decrees that the time is right.

When his character, an executive with BBC television (one of the film's co-producers), gets the call, he jumps on his motorcycle and roars off home, ripping off his clothes as soon as he gets to the front door.

Laurie has had no trouble having offspring himself. He lives in north London with his wife, Jo Green, and they have three children aged 7, 8 and 11.

He recalls taking his kids to watch the filming of a romantic scene in Maybe Baby.

"We kissed and we did the shot and I turned around and I asked my son what he thought of that. He just went [Laurie puts two fingers in his mouth].

"It would be nice to get some approval from my children for once.

"They would much rather I did something like Stuart Little - provided they like it. I'm in big trouble if they don't. They've got to go to school and hold up their heads."

Did Stuart Little pass the test? "That was okay. That gave me some credibility."

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