Gregory

Gregory House, age 47. House has lived in a variety of countries, such as Egypt, the Philippines and Japan. As a result, House is able to speak Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, has conversational Brazilian Portuguese and is able to read at least some Hindi. Furthermore, he was once shown reading a French medical journal and an untranslated Japanese manga. He additionally has some knowledge of several others. For example, he used Yiddish, Russian and Latin phrases several times, but it is unknown how much of these languages he knows. House was obviously a bright child, a mixed blessing as his harshly demanding father and enabling mother obviously had high hopes for him. He cultivated a variety of interests, such as chemistry, playing the piano and guitar. However, it appears that his isolation from people his age and his poor relationship with his parents led House to become something of a loner. He had little to no friends growing up which probably contributed to his antisocial behavior. It is implied that he frequently rebelled against his father and was punished as a result with both intense physical discomfort and emotional isolation.Equipped with a dry and acerbic sense of humor, House is enigmatic and conceals many facets of his personality with a veneer of sarcasm. He appears and sometimes himself claims to be narcissistic, and appears to have a disdain for most people, leading some to label him "a misanthrope". He has contempt for most societal institutions, including feminism and religion. House is an atheist and it is implied that he is nihilistic. These traits make him something of a byronic hero. Despite his cynicism, he does seem to care about his colleagues to a certain extent and while considering them "idiots" is able to sometimes put aside his pride and apologize when he has offended them in a particularly sardonic fashion. House uses his flippancy to conceal his affection toward his colleagues, and denies it to the extent that he himself sometimes forgets it. House hides most of his emotions behind his ever-present snide and witty comebacks. He receives a lot of flak for coming off as unsympathetic towards his patients and for being relatively unmoved by anything that occurs in the hospital. However, distancing himself from the emotional labor of being a physician in this way allows him to approach problems logically and with a clear-headed perspective, making him one of the best doctors around. House is a man in his late forties/early fifties with short, curly brown, greying hair. House wears a variety of blazers, trousers and sneakers, often wearing either a button-up shirt with a t-shirt visible underneath or a button-up shirt with the top two buttons unbuttoned, exposing his upper chest and collarbone, along with jeans and sneakers. He has facial hair and piercing blue eyes.