Eric Foreman

Eric Foreman, M.D., is a fictional character on the Fox medical drama House. He is portrayed by Omar Epps.

Background

A neurologist, Foreman was a member of Dr. Gregory House's handpicked team of specialists at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital's Diagnostic Medicine Department. He was hired by House merely three days prior to the series' pilot episode (as implied in a deleted scene of the pilot).

Foreman attended Columbia University as an undergraduate before matriculating at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In the pilot episode, he mentioned he had a 4.0 GPA through medical school, a fact confirmed by Dr. James Wilson in "Histories".

Little is known about Foreman's past, although it has been suggested that his family was not very well-off and his parents are currently living on a pension (cf. "Histories"). Foreman was also a former juvenile delinquent who once burglarized houses and stole cars. (House claims that this was a major factor in his decision to hire Foreman, that Foreman's delinquent past makes him useful in identifying misbehaving patients.) His father, Rodney (who appears in the episodes "Euphoria, Part 2" and "House Training"), is deeply religious, while his mother is unfit to travel, due to Alzheimer's disease; Foreman also has a brother, Marcus (played by Orlando Jones), who was incarcerated for drug possession until the season 6 episode Moving the Chains. Although he has a somewhat strained relationship with his parents, the show depicts them as loving, though his father is emotionally distant.