I'm OT so sue me:

Mr. Laurie, a household name in Britain since 1980, was not as well known here, except to fans of his British series Blackadder. The confusion over his nationality was played up during last year's Emmy Award telecast. When Mr. Laurie began speaking in his real voice, co-presenter Zach Braff said, "I didn't realize we were doing British accents."

"Well, we're not. I'm British; it's the way I talk," Mr. Laurie protested.

....


Mr. Laurie doesn't use a dialect coach, and he has described his struggle to sustain Dr. Gregory House's American accent as "the hardest single thing in my day."

one more ftw:

LOS ANGELES - For Hugh Laurie, speaking American is an issue."ISH-oo or ISS-you?" he recently asked on the set of Fox's hospital mystery series, "House," his costar Robert Sean Leonard said. In the diagnostic suspense series, which has its second-season premiere tonight, Mr. Leonard plays a Watson-like comrade to Mr. Laurie's Sherlock Holmes-esque sleuth physician,and the rehearsals often are interrupted when the British actor utters a wrong diphthong or some such mispronunciation.

"Expletives come pouring out of his mouth, and he's hittinghimself with the cane," Mr. Leonard said. "It drives him nuts."

That kind of exactitude is what Mr. Laurie demands of himself and his character demands of his underlings. Struggling with aforeign accent is not as bad as hobbling around with a perpetual limp, as the Vicodin-popping Dr. Gregory House must. But it's a mild form of handicap that connects Mr. Laurie to Dr. House's
sense of agitation.

"It is the single hardest part of my job; oh, by far!" he said in an interview in Los Angeles. Off the set, he's relaxed, so his Britishisms are in full flower, as when "herbs" get the hard h. But his stubbly face creases just discussing that dialect problem.

"I can't think of any other human activity that doesn't get easier with repetition," he continued, calming himself with a Marlboro Light. "Making omelets, playing violin, sex, anything -
the more you do it, the better you get at it, supposedly - but for this, it doesn't apply. I find that every day is as painful as the last day, which is painful as the first day I did it."