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Revision as of 03:40, 3 November 2006

Stephen Fry
Born
24 August, 1957
Hampstead, London
Occupation
Actor, writer, comedian, director
Career milestones
Me and My Girl (1984)
Blackadder II (1986)
A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1989–1995)
Blackadder Goes Forth (1989)
Bright Young Things (2003)
QI (2003–present)
Official website
stephenfry.com

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August, 1957) is an English comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. He is an erstwhile comedy collaborator of Hugh Laurie. A second-class graduate, he was nevertheless described as being "a man with a brain the size of Kent" in an interview with Michael Parkinson. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and business insiders. In September 2006, he was also voted by the general public as number 9 in a poll of TV's Greatest Stars.

Childhood and education

Fry was born in Hampstead, London, the son of Alan Fry, an English scientist, and Marianne Neumann, an Austrian of Jewish descent. He has one older brother, Roger, and a younger sister, Joanne. When he was young, the family moved to the country and he grew up in the village of Booton near Reepham, Norfolk. He briefly attended Gresham's School, Holt, before going on to Stout's Hill Preparatory School, Uppingham School, Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house, absconded with a stolen credit card and subsequently spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison for fraud. He then returned to his education at Norwich City College — persuading the college authorities to take him on in order to study for the Cambridge Entrance Exams, and passed well enough to gain a scholarship, before going on to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he gained a 2:1 in English. During his time at Cambridge, he met his longstanding friend and collaborator, Hugh Laurie, joined the Cambridge Footlights and appeared on University Challenge.

Career

Fry came to the public's attention in the mid-1980s with appearances on Saturday Live alongside Hugh Laurie. From here he would work with frequent Saturday Live host Ben Elton on the landmark second series of the classic BBC sitcom Blackadder as Lord Melchett. The late 80s saw Fry's profile raised further as he made a memorable cameo in the third series as The Duke of Wellington along with the first series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie in 1987 and became a regular contestant on Whose Line is it Anyway? in 1988. 1989 saw a career defining perfomance as the insane, bellowing maniac General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth (based heavily on his performance as Wellington 2 years previously).

Fry has often expressed great admiration for three authors in particular: Anthony Buckeridge, his friend Douglas Adams, and P.G. Wodehouse, all of whom have strongly influenced his own writing. Appropriately, he has also appeared in dramatic adaptations of all three men's works: as Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie's Bertie Wooster) in the Granada television adaptations of Wodehouse's short stories, as the voice of The Guide in the film adaptation of Adams' novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and narrating a BBC radio reading of Buckeridge's Jennings stories. He is also a fan of Oscar Wilde, whom he portrayed in the 1997 film Wilde, a role that he has said that he was "born to play".

Fry is also currently hosting the hit question and answer programme QI, with contestants such as Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Phill Jupitus, Liza Tarbuck and Jo Brand. He won the 2006 Rose d'Or award for Best Game Show Host for his work on the series. He has been a regular host of the BAFTA British Academy Film Awards.

Fry also voices or appears in many television advertisements in the UK. He is currently the spokesman for Twinings tea.[citation needed]

Personal life

Fry struggled to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and practised a celibate lifestyle for 16 years. He once commented, "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 going up one of those.'" (Fry admits in his autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, that he "borrowed" the line from a friend at university.) Fry currently lives in London with his long-time partner, Daniel Cohen. He also has a second home in West Bilney near King's Lynn, Norfolk.

Fry met Cohen after piecing his life together following a breakdown in 1995, supposed at the time to be due to bad reviews for his performance in the play Cell Mates, but actually due to a period of depression. He walked out of the production, provoking its early closure and incurring the disgust of his fellow actor, Rik Mayall. He left only an apology note, and turned up some days later in Belgium. He later admitted that had considered committing suicide, but had aborted the attempt.[1]

Fry has since spoken publicly about living with bipolar disorder, and in 2006 made a documentary about his experiences of the condition and also how it affects others.[2] In it, he interviews Robbie Williams, Rick Stein, Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, and Tony Slattery, who all offer personal insights. Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive was presented in two parts, transmitted on BBC Two on 19 September and 26 September 2006.

Fry was an active supporter of the British Labour Party for many years; however, he admitted to not voting in the 2005 General Election, since both the Labour and Conservative parties supported the Iraq War. He has since been increasingly critical of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the "Third Way".

Stephen Fry is not religious. On the episode of QI on 13 October 2006 first aired on BBC Four, when talking about religion he said "Religion, who knows.... shit it". He remarked in an episode of Room 101 he's, "not at all religious." He is outspoken about his "leftist" political leanings. He is on friendly terms with Prince Charles and attended his wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Quotations

Wikiquote has quotations related to Stephen Fry.

"As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth." [3]

  • From an interview in OutUK:

"What you do with your penis or your bottom or anything else is so supremely irrelevant in a moral sense. It's what we do with our personalities and other people that matters." [4]

  • From his autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot:

"There are plenty of other things to be got up to in the homosexual world outside the orbit of the anal ring, but the concept that really gets the goat of the gay-hater, the idea that really spins their melon and sickens their stomach is that most terrible and terrifying of all human notions, love. That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand. Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave. Love as agape, Eros and philos; love as romance, friendship and adoration; love as infatuation, obsession and lust; love as torture, euphoria, ecstasy and oblivion (this is beginning to read like a Calvin Klein perfume catalogue); love as need, passion and desire."

"My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses."

  • From his radio broadcast, "Trefusis Blasphemes":

"I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish."

"You should try the fruit of every tree of every garden in the world. But 'try' is the word. Some fruits will be rotten, some will be poisonous, and some will be so seductive you eat nothing else and become malnu-treated, if there is such a word."

  • From his article "Television Review" for Arena magazine:

"A short word about Noel Edmonds: No."

"How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?"

"One of the nice things about looking at a bear is that you know it spends 100 per cent of every minute of every day being a bear. It doesn't strive to become a better bear. It doesn't go to sleep thinking, "I wasn't really a very good bear today". They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment".

List of works

Written works

Performances

Directorial filmography

Trivia

  • As well as having competed on University Challenge whilst at Cambridge, he appeared in The Young Ones as "Lord Snot", one of the "Footlights College" team (alongside Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Ben Elton) against whom The Young Ones are competing in a fictitious edition of University Challenge. He later appeared in a Comic Relief edition of University Challenge as part of the "Gownies" team of University-graduate comedians against the (victorious) team of "Townies"; and in another Comic Relief special two years later as part of the South team who beat the North.
  • He appeared several times as a panellist on Have I Got News for You during the 1990s, but now refuses to appear on the show as a protest against the sacking of Angus Deayton in 2002.
  • In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
  • In 2005, Fry was made an honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, his alma mater. He has also served a term as Lord Rector of the University of Dundee, which named their main Students' Association bar after one of his novels ('The Liar Bar').
  • Since 2005, Fry has been honorary president of the Cambridge University Quiz Society.
  • Fry was the last ever person awarded the title of Pipe Smoker of the Year before the award's discontinuation for legal reasons.
  • A humorous book has been published that purports to teach people how to speak like Stephen Fry. It is called Tish and Pish: How to be of a Speakingness Like Stephen Fry (ISBN 1-84024-466-6). However, this book is not endorsed by Fry himself.
  • He drives a former London Taxi (Black cab) when driving in London due to ease of manoeuvre. This was documented 25 January 2006 on his segment on the BBC 2 genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.[5] Also in an earlier column in his Paperweight, describing a natural and possibly fictional misunderstanding with a member of the public.
  • Fry is an avid Mac user, owning three iMac Core Duos, two Mac minis, two MacBook Pros, a dual-processor Power Mac G5, a PowerBook G4 and an iMac G5. He also claims to have bought one of the very first Apple Macintosh computers sold in the UK (the first was bought by Fry's friend Douglas Adams), in 1984.[6]
  • He is allergic to champagne, as stated in his panel quiz show QI, series 3, episode 10.
  • In 1995 Fry was presented with an honorary doctorate from Dundee University.
  • In 2001, he appeared on Room 101: a show where guests are allowed to get rid of the things they hate the most. One of his nominations was Room 101 itself.
  • On 16 July 2006, Fry appeared as guest host on the Sport Relief spin-off, A Question of Sport Relief.
  • Fry was Liza Tarbuck's 'phone a friend' on celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. He provided the correct answer before being given the four options. But on a subsequent show he was uncertain which city had hosted the first Formula One Grand Prix in China, and suggested the wrong answer, which the player used.
  • In 2003, he provided the narration for the ultra-low-budget film Hash, a comedy about a bounty hunter named Hash McBrown.
  • When writing a book review for the Tatler he wrote under a disguised persona in what he describes as 'typical cowardice'. He became Williver Hendry, editor of A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey, a topic close to Fry's heart as a renowned Wilde enthusiast.

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ [2]
  3. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/4996976.stm
  4. ^ http://www.outuk.com/index.php?http://www.outuk.com/content/features/humour/
  5. ^ [3]
  6. ^ [4]

See also

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