Hugh Laurie is one of our most successful actors – loved for his roles in hit TV series such as House and The Night Manager.
The 57-year-old actor’s smouldering good looks have also made him a big hit with members of the opposite sex.
Hugh has been struggling with male pattern baldness for years and there are strong reasons to think that he may have had a hair transplant.
You can see an appreciable difference in his hairline in these two recent pictures.
In the image on the left, he has advanced male pattern baldness across his scalp and particularly around the crown.
In the image on the right, taken to publicise the BBC1 series The Night Manager last year, Hugh has an almost full head of hair.
Hugh has not spoken about his problems with hair loss so we don’t know for certain what treatment he has had.
He may well have had a hair transplant – either a FUE (follicular unit extraction) procedure or the more traditional method, FUT (follicular unit transplantation), also known as strip surgery.
Around 80% of patients of Crown Clinic’s consultant surgeon Asim Shahmalak now have FUE procedures. These include the model Calum Best, Chris Steed from Gogglebox, the international footballer Didi Hamann and Martin Roberts from Homes Under The Hammer.
FUE has become increasingly popular because the scarring is less obvious than a FUT procedure.
The TV doctor Christian Jessen had two FUT procedures at Crown Clinic. He wears his hair slightly longer so scarring wasn’t such a big issue for him because his longer hair covered up the scar at the back of his scalp where the donor hair grafts were extracted at Crown Clinic.
Curious about celebrity hair transplants? Read our celebrity case studies here
Some men who have had hair transplants, such as the England footballer captain Wayne Rooney, also use hair thickener to give the impression that their hair is thicker than it really is. Watch how Wayne applies thickener before big games so he looks good.
It could be that Hugh has used lots of thickener and just been pictured in an extremely flattering way in The Night Manager pictures.
A more likely explanation, though, is that he has had a procedure.
Whatever the truth is, I am sure we can all agree that Hugh looks a lot better, and years younger, with a full head of hair.