Amber Tamblyn on Playing House with Hugh Laurie, Complex Roles and Her Favorite 'Crazy Girl' Film Moment

In the last year, Amber Tamblyn has turned over her detective badge from ABC's under-appreciated The Unusuals, inserted a welcome dose of estrogen into Danny Boyle's limb-sawing film 127 Hours, co-starred with her boyfriend David Cross in the IFC series The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and released a book of poetry. As if that weren't enough, the Santa Monica-born actress is also practicing medicine on House, the Fox series where Tamblyn has declared residency for a 13-episode arc.

As Martha M. Masters, Ph.D., a socially awkward third-year resident (whom House describes as "the love child of Einstein and Mary Poppins"), Tamblyn has won acclaim in a role that was originally designed to shift attention away from Olivia Wilde's absence. But like Tamblyn has done many times before, the multi-hyphenate is engaging audience members with a combination of charm, wit and complexity.

Last week, the actress phoned Movieline to first clear up those rumors about audience members fainting during 127 Hours screenings, and second, to discuss her new affection for Hugh Laurie, the art of faking a doctor and her favorite eye-gouging scene on film ever.

I read that you based your character on House on a close friend of yours. Have you gotten any feedback from her yet?

Yes! She loved it but what was really cute was that she said, "Oh my god, I love the show so much! It's so great. But I did notice one error in the speech that a character gave. One tiny thing." And that is of course, very much like her to note that. I forwarded her email to [House creator] David Shore and he said, "That's awesome! And also, I'm embarrassed."

That's hilarious.

It was the most minuscule thing, but that is her personality to compliment you and then also point out something that is wrong because she is so smart.

How long have you known her?

We grew up together. She is my childhood best friend. We went to grade school together and her mom is like my second mom. I still know her mom's phone number by heart. It's that kind of longstanding friendship.

When you first heard about the project, did you feel daunted by the prospect of having to learn all of this medical jargon and be able to use it convincingly?

The first episode was a little scary but you get a rhythm for it. A lot of the words are used over and over again, like Doxycycline which is a pretty common treatment for patients. But it's a challenge, and I hadn't been challenged in this way, linguistically, for awhile, so it was great.

Does it benefit your memorization process to research the conditions that your House patients are suffering from to understand what you are saying? Or is it more of a game of just remembering strings of words?

Sometimes you just have to have faith in your brain. I did everything that I could in terms of looking up what words meant and trying to learn what it is and understand where the word is rooted in Latin. Sometimes that would help. But at the end of the day when you have three cameras pointed in your face and you are getting a close-up while delivering a monologue about illnesses, it's up to you.

Were you intimidated to be acting opposite Hugh Laurie?

No, that was the fun part. He's just really great to be playful in a scene with and that's the great art of an actor like him who is not afraid to go out of the box and is unpredictable in what they are going to do next.

But predictable in what they are going to say. Because I imagine ad-libs are not permitted on the House set.

No, absolutely not. The genius of it is that you have to create a character within that box but who blurs the lines of the box, who does stuff a little outside of that box. That is part of the art form, doing what is written but putting your own spin on it.

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