Hugh Laurie arrives at the FOX TCA Party at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California on July 23, 2007.
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CelebNews@Usmagazine.com! - Hugh Laurie: I Didn't Think I'd Live Past 40

In February's Playboy (on newsstands Jan. 16), House star Hugh Laurie reveals that he was rebellious as a teen.

"I think I suffered from the arrogance of youth," he says. "When I was 15, I and a group of school friends took a sort of pledge that we wouldn't live beyond 40. We decided we'd kill ourselves.

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"In fact, there were some hard-core members of the group -- I wasn't one of them -- who wanted to make it 30," he continues. "'I hope I die before I get old' sort of thing. Talk about arrogance. The arrogance of youth, it trumps all."

These days, the 49-year-old Golden Globe-winning actor has a different perspective on life.

Though, like his character Dr. Gregory House, he says he looks "at the world with one eyebrow arched.

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"We're both quite serious but also have childishness," Laurie says of their similarities. "He and I are eternal adolescents but with this morbid gravity. The other thing is, we both have issues with joy, insomuch as we think it's beyond us.

"I often picture that scene in the Woody Allen movie when he's on the train and looks into another car that's full of people laughing," he says. "They're drinking champagne; somebody has a trombone. And Woody is very much on the outside of that, looking in. I'd say that sums up my view of the world, as well as House's."

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Why do so many fans gravitate toward House?

"He's free from the social gravity that holds us all down and prevents us from saying what we think and doing what we want," he says of his character. "That gravity keeps us down. But because he doesn't care if people like him or approve of him, he's a character who flies. Dreams of flight or weightlessness are very common to us. We all dream of being able to float above the world, and I think that's what House is doing socially."

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