Everything about Steven Fry totally explained
Stephen John Fry (born
24 August 1957) is an
English comedian,
writer,
actor,
humorist,
novelist,
poet,
columnist,
filmmaker,
television personality and
technophile. As one half of the
Fry and Laurie double act with his comedy partner,
Hugh Laurie, he's appeared in
A Bit of Fry and Laurie and
Jeeves and Wooster. He is also famous for his roles in
Blackadder and
Wilde, and as the host of
QI. In addition to writing for stage, screen, television and radio he's contributed columns and articles for numerous newspapers and magazines, and has also written four successful novels and an autobiography,
Moab Is My Washpot.
Biography
Fry was born in
Hampstead, London, the son of Alan Fry, an
English physicist, and Marianne Newman, who is of
Austrian-
Jewish parentage. His mother's aunt and cousins were killed in
Auschwitz concentration camp. before going on to
Stouts Hill Preparatory School, and then to
Uppingham School,
Rutland, where he joined
Fircroft house. He was
expelled from
Uppingham when he was fifteen, and subsequently from the Paston School. At seventeen, following his failure at Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, Fry absconded with a
credit card stolen from a family friend, and as a result spent three months in
Pucklechurch Prison for
fraud. Following his release he resumed education at
Norwich City College, promising administrators that he'd study rigorously to sit the
Cambridge entrance exams. He passed well enough to gain a scholarship to
Queens' College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Fry gained a degree in
English literature, joined the
Cambridge Footlights, and appeared on
University Challenge. As a member of the Footlights he also met his future comedy collaborator, Hugh Laurie.
Personal life
Fry struggled to keep his
homosexuality secret during his
teenage years at
public school, and was
celibate for 16 years from 1979 until 1995.
When asked about when he knew he was homosexual he quotes an old friend and says, "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm coming out of one of those.' " Fry currently lives in London with his partner,
Daniel Cohen, whom he met in 1995. He famously drives a former 1988
London black cab. He also has a second home in West Bilney, near
King's Lynn,
Norfolk.
Fry has been diagnosed with
cyclothymia. He suffered a
nervous breakdown in 1995 while appearing in a
West End play called
Cell Mates and subsequently walked out of the production, prompting its early closure and incurring the displeasure of co-star
Rik Mayall and playwright
Simon Gray. Mayall's comedy partner
Adrian Edmondson made light of the subject in his and Mayall's second
Bottom live show. Fry went missing for several days while contemplating
suicide. He abandoned the idea and left the United Kingdom by ferry, eventually resurfacing in
Belgium.
Fry has spoken publicly about his experience with bipolar disorder and has presented his documentary about it,
Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive. In the programme he interviewed sufferers of the illness including celebrities
Carrie Fisher,
Richard Dreyfuss, and
Tony Slattery. Also featured were chef
Rick Stein, whose father committed suicide,
Robbie Williams, who talks of his experience with
unipolar depression, and comedienne/former psychiatric nurse
Jo Brand.
Fry was an active supporter of the
British Labour Party for many years, and appeared in a party political broadcast on its behalf with Hugh Laurie and
Michelle Collins in November 1993. Despite this, he didn't vote in the 2005
General Election because of the stance of both the Labour and
Conservative parties with regard to the
Iraq War. Despite his praising of the current government for social reform, Fry has been critical of the Labour Party's "
Third Way" concept. He is on cordial terms with
Prince Charles (despite satirising him heavily as
King Charles I in the comedy programme ), through his work with the
Prince's Trust. He attended the wedding of the Prince of Wales to
Camilla Parker-Bowles in 2005.
Fry is a friend of British comedian and actor
Rowan Atkinson and was best man at Atkinson's wedding to Sunetra Sastry at the
Russian Tea Room in
New York City. He was also a friend of British actor
John Mills.
He was best man at the wedding of
Hugh Laurie and is godfather to all three of Laurie's children.
A fan of
cricket, Fry is related to former England cricketer
C.B. Fry, he was recently interviewed for the
Ashes Fever DVD, reporting on
England's victory against
Australia in the
2005 Ashes series. In
football he's a supporter of
Norwich City (as mentioned in
Ashes Fever), and is a regular visitor to
Carrow Road.
He has been described as "deeply dippy for all things
digital", claims to have owned the second
Macintosh sold in the UK (the first going to
Douglas Adams) and to have never encountered a
smartphone that he hasn't bought. He counts Wikipedia among his favourite websites "because I like to find out that I died, and that I'm currently in a ballet in China, and all the other very accurate and important things that the Wikipedia site brings us all."
On
30 April 2008, Fry signed an open letter, published in
The Guardian newspaper by some well known Jewish personalities, stating their opposition to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the
State of Israel.
Career
Television
Fry's career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of
The Cellar Tapes, the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue written by Fry, Hugh Laurie,
Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. The revue caught the attention of
Granada Television, who, keen to replicate the success of the BBC's
Not the Nine O'Clock News, hired Fry, Laurie and Thompson to star alongside
Ben Elton in
There's Nothing To Worry About! A second series, re-titled
Alfresco, was broadcast in 1983 and a third in 1984; it established
Fry and Laurie's reputation as a comedy double act. In 1983 the BBC offered them their own show, which became
The Crystal Cube, a mixture of science fiction and mock documentary that was axed after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry and Laurie appeared in an episode of
The Young Ones in 1984, and Fry in Ben Elton's 1985 series,
Happy Families.
Forgiving Fry and Laurie for
The Crystal Cube, the BBC commissioned a sketch show in 1986 that was to become
A Bit of Fry and Laurie. The programme ran for 26 episodes spanning four series between 1986 and 1995, and was greatly successful. At the same time Fry was starring in
Blackadder II, as Lord Melchett,, as the
Duke of Wellington, and notably in
Blackadder Goes Forth, as General Melchett. In 1988 he became a regular contestant on the popular
improvisational comedy radio show
Whose Line Is It Anyway?. However, when it moved to television, he only appeared three times: twice in the first series and once in the ninth.
Between 1990 and 1993, Fry starred as
Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie's
Bertie Wooster) in
Jeeves and Wooster, 23 hour-long adaptations of
P.G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories.
In 2003 he began hosting
QI, an intellectual panel game that has become one of the most-watched entertainment programmes on British television. In 2006 he won the
Rose d'Or award for Best Game Show Host for his work on the series.
A foray into documentary-making has seen Fry fronting the
Emmy Award-winning
The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006, and in 2007 a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS,
HIV and Me. He is currently filming a six-part travel series entitled
Stephen Fry in America. Also in 2006 he appeared in the genealogy series
Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing his family tree to discover his
Slovak Jewish ancestry.
As of 2008 Fry is appearing in, and is executive producer for, the second series of legal drama
Kingdom. He has also taken up a recurring guest role as psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama
Bones. Whilst filming in Brazil for the series
Last Chance to See, Fry broke his right arm.
Film
Having made his film debut in the 1985 movie
The Good Father, Fry had a brief appearance in
A Fish Called Wanda and then appeared in the lead role for
Kenneth Branagh's
Peter's Friends in 1992. Portraying
Oscar Wilde (a man of whom he'd been a fan since the age of 13) in the 1997 film
Wilde, he fulfilled to critical acclaim a role that he's said he was "born to play". In 2001 he played the detective in Robert Altman's period costume drama,
Gosford Park.
In 2003, Fry made his directorial debut with
Bright Young Things, adapted by himself from
Evelyn Waugh's
Vile Bodies. In 2001 he began hosting the
BAFTA Film Awards, a role from which he stepped down in 2006. Later that same year he wrote the English
libretto and dialogue for Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of
The Magic Flute.
Fry continues to make regular film appearances, notably in treatments of literary cult classics. He served as narrator in a film version of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; and in 2005 he appeared in both
A Cock and Bull Story, based on
Tristram Shandy, and
V for Vendetta. In 2006 he played the role of gadget-master Smithers in
Stormbreaker, and in 2007 he appeared as himself hosting a quiz in
St Trinian's.
Radio
Fry became famous to radio listeners with the creation of his supposed alter-ego —
Donald Trefusis — whose "wireless essays" were broadcast on the
Radio 4 programme
Loose Ends. In 1988 Fry wrote and presented a renowned six-part comedy series entitled
Saturday Night Fry; frequent radio appearances have ensued (notably on panel games
Just a Minute and
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue). In 2000 he began starring as Charles Prentiss in the Radio 4 comedy
Absolute Power, reprising the role for three further series on radio and two on television.
In 2007 he hosted
Current Puns, an exploration into wordplay, and
Radio 4: This Is Your Life, to celebrate the radio station's 40th anniversary. He also interviewed
Tony Blair as part of a series of podcasts released by
10 Downing Street.
In February 2008, Fry began presenting podcasts entitled
Stephen Fry's Podgrams, in which he recounts his life and recent experiences.
Theatre
Fry wrote a play —
Latin! (or
Tobacco and Boys) — for the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, at which it won the "Fringe First" prize.
The Cellar Tapes, the Footlights Revue of the following year, won the
Perrier Comedy Award. In 1984 Fry adapted the hugely successful 1930s musical
Me and My Girl for the West End, where it ran for eight years.
He also famously starred in Simon Gray's 1995 play
Cell Mates, from which he left three days into the West End run, pleading stage fright. He later recalled the incident as a hypomanic episode in his documentary on bipolar disorder. In 2007 Fry wrote a Christmas pantomime,
Cinderella, which ran at London's
Old Vic Theatre.
Literature
Since the publication of his first novel,
The Liar, Fry has written three further novels, several non-fiction works and an autobiography, all of which have been much acclaimed by critics.
Making History is arguably Fry's most controversial book. Set in an alternative universe, inspired by
Daniel Goldhagen's theses, it advances the thesis that the Holocaust, or rather something with similar effects, would have happened even if Hitler hadn't been born.
Fry's most recent book,, is a guide to writing poetry.
In the United Kingdom he's a well-known narrator of audiobooks, notably the
Harry Potter series. He has recorded audio versions of works by
Roald Dahl,
Michael Bond,
A. A. Milne,
Anthony Buckeridge and
Douglas Adams, as well as several of his own books.
When writing a book review for
Tatler, Fry wrote under an alias, Williver Hendry, editor of
A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey, a field close to Fry's heart as an Oscar Wilde enthusiast. Once a columnist in
The Listener and
The Daily Telegraph, he now writes a weekly technology column in the Saturday edition of
The Guardian. His
blog
attracted over 300,000 visitors in its first two weeks of existence.
Acclaim
- In 1995, Fry was presented with an honorary doctorate from the University of Dundee, which named their main Students' Association bar after one of his novels (The Liar Bar). Fry is patron of its Lip Theatre Company. He served two consecutive terms (1992–1995 and 1995–1998) as the student-elected Rector of the University (only the second rector of the university to be elected twice, the first being Clement Freud); coincidentally, this post is currently held by his secondary school classmate, controversial former diplomat Craig Murray.
- Fry was also awarded an honourary degree from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in 2005.
- In 2005, Fry was made honorary president of the Cambridge University Quiz Society and honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.
- In a 2005 poll to find The Comedians' Comedian, Fry was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and business insiders, and, in September 2006, number 9 in a poll of TV's Greatest Stars as voted for by the general public.
- In December 2006 he was ranked 6th for the BBC's Top Living Icon Award, was featured on The Culture Show, and was voted most intelligent man on television by readers of Radio Times.
- 23rd on the previous year's list, the Independent on Sunday Pink List named Fry the second most influential gay person in Britain in May 2007.
- Later the same month he was announced as the 2007 BT Mind Champion of the Year in recognition of the awareness raised by his documentary on bipolar disorder, and was also nominated for Best Entertainment Performance (QI) and Best Factual Series (Secret Life of the Manic Depressive) at the 2007 British Academy Television Awards.
- BBC Four dedicated two nights of programming to Fry on the 17th and 18th August 2007, in celebration of his 50th birthday. The first night, comprising programmes featuring Fry, began with a 60-minute documentary entitled Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out. The second night was composed of programmes selected by Fry, as well as a 60-minute interview with Mark Lawson and half-hour special, Stephen Fry: Guilty Pleasures. Stephen Fry Weekend proved such a ratings hit for BBC Four that it was repeated on BBC Two for the 16th and 17th September.
- He currently holds the UK record for saying "fuck" the most times on a live television broadcast.
- Fry was the last person to be named Pipe Smoker of the Year before the award was discontinued for legal reasons.
- He is a Patron of the Norwich Playhouse theatre and a Vice President of The Noël Coward Society.
- He was granted a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards on December 5, 2007.
- In 2007 Broadcast magazine listed Fry at #4 in its "Hot 100" list of influential on-screen performers, describing him as a polymath and a "national treasure".
Health
In Episode C.10 of QI he revealed he's allergic to champagne.
In January 2008, Fry broke his arm while filming in Brazil.
He has a deviated septum due to falling and breaking his nose when he was six.
List of works
Written works
Films and screenplays
Musicals
Novels
Other books
Plays
Published television scripts
Performances
Films
Plays
Radio shows
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase: Murray Bost Henson, BBC Radio 4
- Saturday Night Fry (1988, BBC Radio 4, six episodes)
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1994, BBC Radio Four, two half-hour programmes compiled from selected previously-seen sketches from the TV series)
- Absolute Power, BBC Radio Four
- Occasional guest panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, BBC Radio Four
- Regular guest panellist on Just a Minute, BBC Radio Four
- Has a regular slot, The Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music on Classic FM
- Played the lead, David Lander, on Radio 4 series Delve Special
- A series of "wireless essays", supposedly by his alter ego, the elderly Cambridge philology professor Donald Trefusis, were featured in the BBC Radio 4 programme Loose Ends, hosted by Ned Sherrin
- Fry contributed regular parodies of BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat to the same station's arts programme Studio B15
Television programmes
- The Crystal Cube (one-off BBC2 sketch show) (1983)
- Alfresco (1983–84)
- The Young Ones (1984)
- Happy Families (1985)
- Filthy Rich & Catflap (1986)
- The Blackadder Series: Blackadder II (1986), Blackadder the Third (1987), and Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988), Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), and (1999)
- Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988, 1997)
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1987 pilot, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995)
- This Is David Lander (1988)
- The New Statesman (1989)
- Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993)
- Common Pursuit (1992)
- The Thin Blue Line (1995)
- Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
- In the Red (1998)
- Watership Down (1999)
- Gormenghast (2000)
- QI (2003–present)
- A Bear Named Winnie (2004)
- Absolute Power (2003, 2005)
- Tom Brown's Schooldays (2005)
- Pocoyo (2005) — an animated children's television programme, which he narrated
- Extras (2006)
- The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (2006)
- Bones (2007)
- Kingdom (2007)
- Shrink Rap (2007) — a quasi-therapeutic interview conducted by Pamela Stephenson
- Stephen Fry: HIV and Me (2007)
- Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (2008)
Audiobooks
Miscellaneous
Directorial filmography
Films
Further Information
Get more info on 'Steven Fry'.
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