Stephen Fry
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Stephen John Fry (born 24 August, 1957) is an English comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. He is an erstwhile comedy collaborator of Hugh Laurie. He was 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 comedy insiders.
In recent years, Fry has more or less assumed the role of a national treasure in the UK. He is sometimes perceived as a tweedy, old-fashioned figure despite being what could be considered an unorthodox individual: a homosexual of Jewish descent with a troubled youth and frequently unconventional views.
Contents
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. When he was young the family moved to the country and he grew up in Norfolk, briefly attending Gresham's School, Holt, before going on to Stout's Hill Preparatory School, Uppingham School, Rutland, during which time Fry 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, by sheer force of will, 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 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 highlights
Highlights of Fry's career include:
- In 1984, rewriting the script of the stage musical, Me and My Girl, which subsequently became a huge West End hit.
- Starring alongside one of his longest-standing friends, Hugh Laurie, in A Bit of Fry and Laurie for a number of years.
- Appearing, alongside Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, and Tim McInnerny, in ' and with Hugh Laurie in ' as well as cameos in and other ''Blackadder spin-offs.
- Hosting the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs)
- Making his debut as a film director with 2003's Bright Young Things, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies.
Fry is also currently hosting the hit question and answer programme QI with contestants such as Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Phill Jupitus and Jo Brand. He won the 2006 Rose d'Or award for Best Game Show Host for his work on the series.
Fry also voices or appears in many television advertisements in the UK. He is currently the spokesman for Twinings tea.
Personal life
Fry has spoken about his struggle to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and famously practised a celibate lifestyle for 16 years. He once famously 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. Fry met Cohen after piecing his life together following a breakdown in 1995 due to bad reviews for his performance in the play Cell Mates. He walked out of the production, provoking its early closure, and incurring the disgust of his fellow actor, Rik Mayall. He also has a second home in West Bilney near King's Lynn, Norfolk.Fry has since spoken publicly about his experience of bipolar disorder, and has made a documentary about other people's experiences of the condition. [link],[link]
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.
Quotations
- May 2006, essay for the BBC programme This Week:
"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." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/4996976.stm
- 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." http://www.outuk.com/index.php?http://www.outuk.com/content/features/humour/
- 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, ecstacy and oblivion (this is beginning to read like a Calvin Klein perfume catalogue); love as need, passion and desire."
- "My vocals 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 or freedom, a celebrant at the alter 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 conons 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?"
List of works
Written works
- Films and screenplays
- * Bright Young Things (2003)
- * The Magic Flute (libretto, forthcoming[link])
- Musicals
- * Me and My Girl (adapted Lupino Lane's script) (1983)
- Novels
- * The Liar (1992) (in which Donald Trefusis is a character)
- * The Hippopotamus (1994)
- * Making History (an example of alternate history) (1997) Winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History
- * The Stars' Tennis Balls (as Revenge: A Novel in the United States) (Fry's take on The Count of Monte Cristo story (2000))
- Other books
- * Paperweight (collection of articles) (1992), including, among others, some of the "wireless essays" supposedly by professor Donald Trefusis.
- * Moab Is My Washpot (autobiography) (1997)
- * Rescuing the Spectacled Bear: A Peruvian Diary (2002)
- * Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music (2004)
- * (2005)
- Plays
- * Latin! (or Tobacco and Boys.) (1979, included in Paperweight). Winner of the Fringe First at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival.
- * A panto version of Cinderella slated to open at the Old Vic for Christmas 2007. [link]
- Published television scripts
- * A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1990)
- * A Bit More Fry & Laurie (1991)
- * 3 Bits of Fry & Laurie (1992)
- * Fry & Laurie Bit No. 4 (1995)
Performances
- Films
- * A Fish Called Wanda (1988, cameo)
- * Peter's Friends (1992) by Kenneth Branagh
- * I.Q. (1994)
- * Wilde (1997) as Oscar Wilde
- * Spice World (1997)
- * A Civil Action (1998)
- * Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999)
- * Relative Values (2000), based on Noel Coward's play
- * Gosford Park (2001) by Robert Altman
- * The Discovery of Heaven (2001)
- * Thunderpants (2002)
- * Le Divorce (2003) by James Ivory
- * A Bear Named Winnie (2004)
- * The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)
- * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) - The Guide (voice)
- * Mirrormask (2005)
- * A Cock and Bull Story (2006)
- * V for Vendetta (2006)
- * Stormbreaker (2006)
- Plays
- * The Common Pursuit (1988)
- * Cell Mates, by Simon Gray (1995)
- 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
- * Regular 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 philologist professor Donald Trefusis, were featured in the BBC Radio 4 programme Loose Ends, hosted by Ned Sherrin.
- Television programmes
- * The Young Ones (1984)
- * The Blackadder Series
- ** (1986)
- ** (1987)
- ** (1988)
- ** Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988)
- ** (1989)
- * Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988, 1997)
- * A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1987 pilot, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995)
- * This Is David Lander (1988)
- * Jeeves and Wooster (1990–93)
- * Common Pursuit (1992)
- * The Thin Blue Line (1995)
- * Gormenghast (2000)
- * QI (2003-onwards)
- * Absolute Power (2003, 2005)
- * Tom Brown's Schooldays (2005)
- * Pocoyo (2005) - an animated children's television programme, which he narrated
- Miscellaneous
He also made a guest appearance in a special webcast version of Doctor Who in a story called Death Comes to Time, in which he plays a Time Lord, the Minister of Chance.
Directorial filmography
- Films
- * Bright Young Things (director, 2003)
Trivia
- The Stars' Tennis Balls' major characters all have names that are anagrams or other simple mutations of their counterparts in The Count of Monte Cristo (Fry claimed that he had almost completed writing the book when he realised that his plot was essentially the same as Dumas'. He thus changed the characters' names, so that his novel would appear to be a conscious homage to Dumas.):
Monte Cristo Stars' Tennis Balls Notes Edmond Dantes Ned Maddstone anagram Mercedes Portia pun: Mercedes-Benz → Porsche de Villefort Oliver Delft anagram the Abbe (Faria) the Babe (Fraser) partial anagram Fernand Mondego Gordon Fendeman anagram Noirtier Blackrow translated literally (calque) Capt. Leclere Paddy Leclare homonym Caderousse Rufus Cade translation: rousse = red = Rufus Baron Danglars Barson-Garland anagram Monte Cristo Simon Cotter anagram - As well as having competed on University Challenge whilst at Cambridge, he also appeared in The Young Ones as "Lord Snot", one of the "Footlights College" team (alongside Hugh Laurie as well as Emma Thompson) 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 panelist 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.
- Very early in his West End debut (Simon Gray's play Cell Mates), Fry suffered an attack of stage fright so serious that he ran away, leaving only an apology, and turning up some days later in Belgium.
- In 2005, Fry was made an honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, from which he graduated. 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 1840244666). 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?". [link] Also in an earlier column in his Paperweight, describing a natural and possibly fictional misunderstanding with a member of the public.
- Fry claims to have bought the second Apple Macintosh computer sold in the UK (the first was bought by Fry's friend Douglas Adams). [link]
- 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.
See also
- Hugh Laurie
- Fry and Laurie
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie
- Famous Fans of Norwich City F.C.
External links
- [Official Stephen Fry Web site]
- [Essay on contempt and politics for BBC1's This Week]
- [Stephen Fry on PG Wodehouse]
- [Stephen Fry interview]
- [BBC Films Interview]
- [BBC Programme Catalogue: Stephen Fry]
- [June 14, 2006 webchat transcript]
References
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