Stephen John Fry (b.1957) is an English actor, writer, director, and broadcaster. He is known mainly for his virtuosic command and comical abuse of the English language—in both speech and writing.
Born in London, Fry studied at Queen’s College, Cambridge, where he appeared in over 30 plays. He wrote his first play Latin (1980,) which won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival of that year and appeared with the Cambridge Footlights revue. He also wrote the book for the long-running West End-musical Me and My Girl (1984.)
Fry and his Cambridge Footlights associate Hugh Laurie appeared in A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989–95,) Jeeves and Wooster (1990–93,) and the film Peter’s Friends (1992.) Fry was also on television in Stalag Luft (1993) and Cold Comfort Farm (1995.)
Fry’s stage appearances include Forty Years On (1984,) The Common Pursuit (1988,) and Look Look (1990.) He was in the films A Handful of Dust (1988,) A Fish Called Wanda (1988,) and the Oscar Wilde biopic Wilde (1996.) His bestselling novels include The Liar (1991,) The Hippopotamus (1994,) and Making History (1996.)
Fry caused a media sensation in 1995 when he walked out of the Simon Gray play Cell Mates (1995,) before its opening in London’s West End, and vanished to Belgium without a trace. He later ascribed these events to a bipolar disorder and embarked on a campaign to help raise awareness for the challenges of bipolar disorder; he made the documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (2006.) In 2003, he launched the panel quiz programme QI.
Fry is also outspoken about suicide following an attempt to kill himself in 2012.
Fry’s multivolume autobiographies are Moab Is My Washpot (1997,) The Fry Chronicles (2010,) and More Fool Me (2014.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Stephen Fry
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.
—Stephen Fry
You don’t need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.
—Stephen Fry
Topics: Management
Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive
—Stephen Fry
Topics: Christmas
The beauty of the brain is that you can still be as greedy as you like for knowledge and it doesn’t show.
—Stephen Fry
When I was at Cambridge it was, naturally enough, I felt, my ambition to be approached in some way by an elderly homosexual don and asked to spy for or against my country.
—Stephen Fry
An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.
—Stephen Fry
Topics: Ideas
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