Actor, commedian, politician & good causes
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He first came to prominence as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989–1995) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993). He also starred in the sketch series Alfresco (1983–1984) alongside Laurie, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, and in Blackadder (1986–1989) alongside Rowan Atkinson. Since 2011, he has served as president of the mental health charity Mind.
Fry's film acting roles include playing his idol Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde (1997), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor; Inspector Thompson in Robert Altman's murder mystery Gosford Park (2001); and Mr. Johnson in Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship (2016). He has also had roles in the films Chariots of Fire (1981), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
He portrays the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and its 2016 sequel, and the Master of Lake-town in the film series adaptation of The Hobbit. Between 2001 and 2017, he hosted the British Academy Film Awards 12 times.
His television roles include Lord Melchett in the BBC television comedy series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom and Absolute Power, as well as recurring guest roles as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the American crime series Bones and Arthur Garrison MP on the Channel 4 period drama It's a Sin. He has also written and presented several documentary series, including the Emmy Award-winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, which saw him explore his bipolar disorder, and the travel series Stephen Fry in America.
He was the longtime host of the BBC television quiz show QI, with his tenure lasting from 2003 to 2016, during which he was nominated for six British Academy Television Awards. He appears frequently on other panel games, such as the radio programmes Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.[2][3][4]
Fry is also known for his work in theatre. In 1984, he adapted Me and My Girl for the West End where it ran for eight years and received two Laurence Olivier Awards. After it transferred to Broadway, he received a Tony Award nomination. In 2012 he played Malvolio in Twelfth Night at Shakespeare's Globe. The production was then taken to the West End before transferring to Broadway where he received a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Fry is also a prolific writer, contributing to newspapers and magazines, and has written four novels and three autobiographies. He has lent his voice to numerous projects including the audiobooks for all seven of the Harry Potter novels and Paddington Bear novels
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the early days
Early life and education
Fry at rehearsals for a student production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, 1975
Stephen John Fry was born on 24 August 1957 in the Hampstead area of London,[6] the son of Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman) and physicist and inventor Alan John Fry (1930–2019).
He has an older brother, Roger, and a younger sister, Joanna. His paternal grandmother, Ella Fry (née Pring), had roots n Cheshire and Kent. The Fry family originates around the Shillingstone and Blandford areas of Dorset; in the early 1800s, Samuel Fry settled in Surrey, with his descendants residing in Middlesex. In his autobiographical writings and elsewhere, Fry has claimed relationship to the Fry family that founded the eponymous chocolate company, John Fry (one of the signatories to the death warrant for Charles I), and the cricketer C. B. Fry. Fry's mother is Jewish, but he was not brought up in a religious family. His maternal grandparents, Martin and Rosa Neumann,[ were Hungarian Jews who emigrated rom Šurany (now in Slovakia) to the UK in 1927. Rosa's parents, who originally lived in Vienna, were sent to a concentration camp in Riga. His mother's aunt and cousins were sent to Auschwitz and Stutthof and never seen again.
Fry grew up in the village of Booton, Norfolk, having moved at an early age from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where he had attended Chesham Preparatory School. He briefly attended Cawston Primary School in Cawston, Norfolk, before going on to Stouts Hill Preparatory School in Uley, Gloucestershire, at the age of seven, and then to Uppingham School in Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius" He took his O-Levels in 1972 at the early age of 14 and passed all except physics, ] but was expelled from Uppingham half a term into the sixth form. Fry described himself as a "monstrous" child and wrote that he was expelled for "various misdemeanours". He was later dismissed from Paston School, a grant-maintained grammar school that refused to let him progress to study A-Levels.
Fry moved to Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, where, after two years in the sixth form studying English, French, and History of Art he ultimately failed his A-Levels, not turning up for his English and French papers. Over the summer, Fry absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend. He had taken a coat when leaving a pub, planning to spend the night sleeping rough, but had then discovered the card in a pocket He was arrested in Swindon and, as a result, spent three months in Pucklechurch Remand Centre on remand. Following his release, he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously and sit the Cambridge entrance exams. In the summer of 1977, he passed two A-Levels in English and French, with grades of A and B. He also received a grade A in an alternative O-Level in the Study of Art ] and scored a distinction in an S-Level paper in English. Having successfully passed the entrance exams in autumn 1977, Fry was offered a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge, for matriculation in autumn 1978, briefly teaching at Cundall Manor School, a preparatory school in North Yorkshire, before taking his place. At Cambridge, he joined the Footlights, appeared on University Challenge,[ and read English Literature, graduating with an upper second-class honours BA degree in 1981 (subsequently promoted to a Cambridge MA degree). Fry also met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie (through their mutual friend Emma Thompson) at Cambridge and starred alongside him in the Footlights.
1981–1993: Sketch comedy beginnings
Fry wrote the play Latin! or Tobacco and Boys for the 1980 Edinburgh Festival, where it won the Fringe First prize. It had a revival in 2009 at London's Cock Tavern Theatre, directed by Adam Spreadbury-Maher. The Cellar Tapes, the Footlights Revue of 1981, 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 and received two Laurence Olivier Awards. The show transferred to Broadway and Fry was nominated for a Tony Award for his adaptation.
Fry has appeared in numerous advertisements, predominantly on UK television – either on-screen or in voice-over – starting with an appearance as "Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar" in a 1982 advert for Whitbread Best Bitter. Fry has said, in his memoirs, that after receiving his payment for this work – £25,000 – he has never subsequently experienced "what one could call serious money troubles" .
He has since appeared in adverts for products and companies such as Marks & Spencer, Twinings, Kenco, Vuuxhall Motors, Honda, Calpol, Heineken, Alliance & Leicester (a series of adverts which also featured Hugh Laurie), After Eight mints, Direct Line insurance (with Paul Merton), Trebor mints, Virgin Media, Walkers potato crisps (fronting a new flavour), ] and Sainsbury's supermarket. He filmed a 2016 advertisement where he explains the essence of British culture to foreigners arriving at London's Heathrow Airport.
Fry's career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of The Cellar Tapes, the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue which was 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, retitled 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 Fry, Laurie and Thompson their own show, which became The Crystal Cube, a mixture of science fiction and mockumentary that was cancelled after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry, Laurie and Thompson appeared in "Bambi", an episode of The Young Ones from 1984 where they parodied themselves as the University Challenge representatives of "Footlights College, Oxbridge", and Fry also appeared in Ben Elton's 1985 Happy Families series. In April 1986, Fry was among the British comedians who appeared in the first live telethon Comic Relief. In 1986 and 1987, Fry and Laurie performed sketches on the LWT/Channel 4 show Saturday Live.
In 1986, the BBC commissioned a sketch show that was to become A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Following a 1987 pilot, the programme ran for 26 episodes across four series between 1989 and 1995. During this time, Fry starred in Blackadder II as Lord Melchett, made a guest appearance in Blackadder the Third as the Duke of Wellington, then returned to a starring role in Blackadder Goes Forth, as General Melchett. In a 1988 television special, Blackadder's Christmas Carol, he played the roles of Lord Melchett and Lord Frondo. 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. Fry has appeared in a number of BBC adaptations of plays and books, including a 1992 adaptation of the Simon Gray play The Common Pursuit (he had previously appeared in the West End stage production).
Having made his film début in the 1985 film The Good Father, Fry had a brief appearance in A Fish Called Wanda (in which he is knocked out by Kevin Kline, who is posing as an airport security man), and then appeared as the eponymous Peter in Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends in 1992. Fry came to the attention of radio listeners with the 1986 creation of his alter-ego, Donald Trefusis, whose "wireless essays" were broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme Loose Ends. In the 1980s, he starred as David Lander in four series of the BBC Radio 4 show Delve Special, written by Tony Sarchet, which then became the six-part Channel 4 series This is David Lander in 1988. In 1988, Fry wrote and presented a 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.
Fry was cast in Simon Gray's The Common Pursuit for its first staging in the West End on 7 April 1988, with Rik Mayall, John Sessions, Sarah Berger, Paul Mooney and John Gordon Sinclair, directed by Simon Gray. Fry is a long-standing fan of the anarchic British musical comedy group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and particularly of its eccentric front man, the late Vivian Stanshall. Fry helped to fund a 1988 London re-staging of Stanshall's Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera, written by Vivian and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall for the Bristol-based Old Profanity Showboat.
1994–2008: Film roles, voice work and QI[
Fry would call Oscar Wilde (pictured) in the 1997 film Wilde a role he was "born to play".
Fry's first novel, The Liar, was published in 1991. Fry has since written three further novels, several non-fiction works and three volumes of autobiography. Making History (1996) is partly set in an alternative universe in which Adolf Hitler's father is made infertile and his replacement proves a more effective Führer. The book won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The Hippopotamus (1994) is about Edward (Ted/Tedward) Wallace and his stay at his old friend Lord Logan's country manor in Norfolk. The Hippopotamus was later adapted into a 2017 film. The Stars' Tennis Balls (2000) is a modern retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. Fry's book The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within is a guide to writing poetry.
When writing a book review for Tatler, Fry wrote under a pen name, Williver Hendry, editor of A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey, a field close to his heart as an Oscar Wilde enthusiast. Once a columnist in The Listener and The Daily Telegraph, he wrote a weekly technology column in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. His blog attracted more than 300,000 visitors in its first two weeks
Fry was cast in a lead role in Simon Gray's 1995 play Cell Mates, 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 about bipolar disorder, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. He acted in a 1998 Malcolm Bradbury adaptation of the Mark Tavener novel In the Red, taking the part of the Controller of BBC Radio 2; and in 2000 in the role of Professor Bellgrove in the BBC serial Gormenghast, which was adapted from the first two novels of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. In the 1994 romantic comedy film I.Q., he played the role of James Moreland. Portraying his idol Oscar Wilde (of whom he had been an ardent admirer since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde, he fulfilled the role to critical acclaim It earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Drama. In 1997, he also had a cameo in the Spice Girls film Spice World. ] A year later, Fry starred in David Yates' small independent film The Tichborne Claimant, and in 2001, he played the detective in Robert Altman's period costume drama, Gosford Park. In the same year, he also appeared in the Dutch film The Discovery of Heaven, directed by Jeroen Krabbé and based on the novel by Harry Mulisch.
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 2002, he played The Minister of Chance in the Doctor Who audio drama Death Comes to Time.[55] In 2002, Fry was one of the narrators of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, in which he voiced Winnie-the-Pooh. He presented a 20-part, two-hour series, The Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music, a "witty guide" to the genre over the past 1,000 years, on Classic FM. In 2004 he was the narrator for an adaptation of Vanity Fair on BBC Radio 4.[56] Fry has been the reader for the British versions of all of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of audiobooks. He discussed this project in an interview with Rowling in 2005.[57] He has also read for Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film tie-in edition and has made recordings of his own books, such as The Stars' Tennis Balls and Moab Is My Washpot, and of works by Roald Dahl, Michael Bond, A. A. Milne, Anthony Buckeridge, Eleanor Updale, George Orwell, and Alexander Pushkin.
In 2003, Fry began hosting QI (Quite Interesting), a comedy panel game television quiz show. QI was created and co-produced by John Lloyd, and features permanent panellist Alan Davies. QI has the highest viewing figures for any show on BBC Four and Dave (formerly UKTV G2).[58][59] In 2006, Fry won the Rose d'Or award for "Best Game Show Host" for his work on the series. In October 2015, it was announced that Fry would retire as the host of QI after the "M" series, and he was replaced by Sandi Toksvig.[60]
Towards the end of 2003, Fry starred alongside John Bird in the television adaptation of Absolute Power, previously a radio series on BBC Radio 4. Fry's first documentary was the Emmy Award-winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006.[61] The same year, he appeared on the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing his maternal family tree to investigate his Jewish ancestry.[62] In 2003, Fry made his directorial début with Bright Young Things, adapted by him from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. In 2001, he began hosting the BAFTA Film Awards, a role from which he stepped down in 2006.[63] Later that same year, he wrote the English libretto and dialogue for Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of The Magic Flute.[64] Fry continued to make regular film appearances, notably in treatments of literary cult classics. He portrayed the clairvoyant Maurice Woodruff in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers and served as narrator in the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 2005, he appeared in A Cock and Bull Story, based on Tristram Shandy. In the same year, in V for Vendetta, he played a closeted TV presenter who challenges a fascist state - the screenwriters, The Wachowskis, pointed out that it was Fry's "normalcy" in the face of the insanity of the censorship of BTV that made his character truly powerful and added a "wholly unexpected dimension to the film".[65] Fry performed several of Stanshall's numbers as part of the Bonzos' 2006 reunion concert at the London Astoria.
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. In 2007, Fry wrote, for director Peter Jackson, a script for a remake of The Dam Busters.[66] That year he also appeared in Eichmann (2007).[67] Fry narrated The Story of Light Entertainment, which was shown from July–September 2006.[68] In 2007, he presented a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS, HIV and Me.[69] In 2007, Fry wrote a Christmas pantomime, Cinderella, which ran at London's Old Vic Theatre.[70] In 2007, he hosted Current Puns, an exploration of wordplay, and Radio 4: This Is Your Life, to celebrate the radio station's 40th anniversary. He also interviewed the Prime Minister Tony Blair as part of a series of podcasts released by 10 Downing Street.[71] He also narrated the first four Harry Potter games: Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire.
From 2007 to 2009, Fry played the lead role in (and was executive producer for) the legal drama Kingdom, which ran for three series on ITV1.[72] Starting from 2007, he took a recurring guest role as FBI psychiatrist Dr. (later chef) Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama Bones.
2008–2014: Return to theatre and documentaries
In February 2008, Fry began presenting podcasts entitled Stephen Fry's Podgrams, in which he recounts his life and recent experiences.[73] In July 2008, he appeared as himself in I Love Stephen Fry, an Afternoon Play for Radio 4 written by former Fry and Laurie script editor Jon Canter . On 7 May 2008, Fry gave a speech as part of a series of BBC lectures on the future of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom which he later recorded for a podcast. His six-part travel series Stephen Fry in America began on BBC One in October 2008, and saw him travel to each of the 50 US states.In the same year, he narrated the nature documentaries Spectacled Bears: Shadow of the Forest for the BBC Natural World series. In the 2009 television series Last Chance to See, Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine sought out endangered species, some of which had been featured in Douglas Adams' and Carwardine's 1990 book and radio series of the same name. Fry's voice has been featured in a number of video games, including an appearance as Reaver, an amoral supporting character in Lionhead Studios games Fable II (2008) and Fable III (2010), and as the narrator of the LittleBigPlanet series. He also narrates a section of Bungie's Destiny 2 (2017) expansion Warmind as the "Concierge"; an AI that, when interacted with at certain points, will give the player background information on Bray Exoscience. In 2008, Fry's narration for Bond's Paddington Bear story More About Paddington (1959) saw him receive the Audie Award for Young Listeners' Title from the Audio Publishers Association in the U.S.[81]
Since August 2008, he has presented Fry's English Delight, a series on BBC Radio 4 about the English language.[82] As of 2021, it has been running for ten series and 37 episodes. In the summer 2009 series of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Fry was one of a trio of hosts replacing Humphrey Lyttelton (the others being Jack Dee and Rob Brydon). Fry was offered a role in Valkyrie, but was unable to participate. In May 2009, Fry unveiled The Dongle of Donald Trefusis, an audiobook series following Donald Trefusis (a fictional character from Fry's novel The Liar and from the BBC Radio 4 series Loose Ends), set over 12 episodes.[85] After its release, it reached No. 1 on the UK Album Chart list. Ultimately however only three episodes were released, the rest with the note 'exact release date pending'. Fry's use of the word "luvvie" (spelled "lovie" by Fry), in The Guardian on 2 April 1988, is given by the Oxford English Dictionary as the earliest recorded use of the word as a humorous synonym for "actor". Fry was, at one time, slated to adapt A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole for the big screen. In 2009, Fry provided the voice of St Peter for Liberace, Live From Heaven by Julian Woolford at London's Leicester Square Theatre. In 2010, having learned some Irish for the role, he filmed a cameo role in Ros na Rún, an Irish-language soap opera broadcast in Ireland, Scotland and the US.]
In 2010, Fry became an investor in Pus His choice for the greatest gadget was the cigarette lighter, which he described as "fire with a flick of the fingers" In the same month, the nature documentary series Ocean Giants, narrated by Fry, premiered. In September 2011, Fry's Planet Word, a five-part documentary about language, aired on BBC HD and BBC Two In November 2011, an episode of Living The Life featured Fry in an intimate conversation discussing his life and career with The Rolling Stones' bass player Bill Wyman.
Fry starred in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, as the voice of the Cheshire Cat He played Mycroft Holmes in the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, directed by Guy Ritchie. He portrayed the Master of Lake-town in two of Peter Jackson's three film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit: the second The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the third The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. In 2011, Fry appeared on Kate Bush's album 50 Words for Snow, featuring on the title track where he recites a list of surreal words to describe snow. In September 2012, Fry made a return to the stage at Shakespeare's Globe, appearing as Malvolio in a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which transferred to the West End in November 2012.He received excellent reviews. The production transferred to Broadway, with Opening Night on 10 November 2013. Fry was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his work in the Broadway revival. In August 2013, he lent his voice to the title role in Benjamin Britten's operetta Paul Bunyan at the Wales Millennium Centre with the Welsh National Youth Opera.
In 2012, he appeared as a guest panellist in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show Wordaholics. In September 2012, he guest-starred as himself in the audio comedy drama We Are The BBC, produced by the Wireless Theatre Company, written by Susan Casanove. At the 2012 Pride of Britain Awards shown on ITV on 30 October, Fry, along with Michael Caine, Elton John, Richard Branson and Simon Cowell, recited Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—" in tribute to the 2012 British Olympic and Paralympic athletes. In November 2012, Fry hosted a gadgets show called Gadget Man, exploring the usefulness of various gadgets in different daily situations to improve the livelihoods of everyone.[113] In October 2013, Fry presented Stephen Fry: Out There, a two-part documentary in which he explores attitudes to homosexuality and the lives of gay people in different parts of the globe. On Christmas Day 2013, Fry featured with adventurer Bear Grylls in an episode of Channel 4's Bear's Wild Weekends. Over the course of two days, in the Italian Dolomites, Fry travelled on the skids of a helicopter, climbed down a raging 500-foot waterfall, slept in a First World War trench and abseiled down a towering cliff face.[30] In June 2015, Fry was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His favourite piece was the String Quartet No. 14 by Beethoven. His book choice was Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot and his luxury item was "canvasses, easels, brushes, an instruction manual".
Fry narrated the first two seasons of the English-language version of the Spanish children's animated series Pocoyo. In 2014, he began starring alongside Kiefer Sutherland and William Devane in 24: Live Another Day as British Prime Minister Alastair Davies.[ In July 2014, Fry appeared on stage with Monty Python on the opening night of their live show Monty Python Live (Mostly). Fry was the special guest in their "Blackmail" sketch.]
2015–present
On 17 September 2015, Fry shared the role of the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show which was staged at London's Playhouse Theatre and broadcast as the Rocky Horror Show Live.[120] In June 2015, Fry backed children's fairy tale app GivingTales in aid of UNICEF together with other British celebrities Sir Roger Moore, Ewan McGregor, Joanna Lumley, Michael Caine, David Walliams, Dame Joan Collins, Charlotte Rampling, Paul McKenna and Michael Ball.] In 2015, Fry made a live audio recording of the winning short story of the annual RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award, Ms. Featherstone and the Beast by Bethan Roberts, at a ceremony held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In February 2017, Audible released Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, a complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, all read by Fry, who also narrated an introduction for each novel or collection of stories. In 2017, Fry also released his own audiobook on Audible, titled Mythos, which he both wrote and narrated. In 2018, Fry released a follow-up to Mythos, titled Heroes In June 2020, it was announced that Fry would read J. K. Rowling's children's book, The Ickabog. Fry is the patron of the audiobook charity Listening Books. Fry said of his patronage, "I'm proud and delighted to be patron of the first audiobook charity to offer downloads to its members and excited about what this will mean for all print impaired people w ho can now listen on-the-go."
In January 2016, it was announced that Fry would be appearing as the character "Cuddly Dick" in Series 3 of the Sky One family comedy Yonderland. In 2016, Fry had a lead role in the American sitcom The Great Indoors. He portrayed an outdoor magazine publisher helping to ease his best worldly reporter (Joel McHale) into a desk job.[128] The show was cancelled after one season.[129] In November 2019, it was announced that Fry would guest star in "Spyfall", the two-part opening episode of Doctor Who's twelfth series, which was broadcast on New Year's Day 2020 Fry also starred in the 2018 heist comedy film The Con Is On, previously titled The Brits Are Coming. From May to July 2018, Fry appeared in Mythos: A Trilogy, a stage version of his book Mythos, in the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. This comprised a set of three one-man shows (titled Gods, Heroes and Men), each two hours in length, which were performed consecutively, multiple times during the show's run.[133] The production received its European premiere in August 2019 at the Edinburgh International Festival. In September 2020, Fry was among the stars to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Noël Coward's West End debut with a stage celebration titled "A Marvellous Party".
He reprised his role as (a descendant of) Lord Melchett for The Big Night In, a 20 April 2020 telethon held during the COVID-19 pandemic, for a skit in which he held a video call with Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who made a surprise appearance. In 2022, Fry had a recurring role as biochemist Ian Gibbons in the Hulu miniseries The Dropout, which dramatizes the scandal involving biotechnology company Theranos. He portrayed Fiddler's Green / Gilbert in the Netflix series The Sandman (2022). The same year he starred in two episodes of the Netflix romantic LGBT teen drama Heartstopper as headmaster of the main character's school.[139] In 2023, he portrayed a fictitious King James III in the LGBT romantic comedy Red, White & Royal Blue.[140] That same year he also presented the Channel 4 documentary Stephen Fry: Willem & Frieda – Defying the Nazis to positive reviews and its Alternative Christmas message.
Personal life
Fry married comedian Elliott Spencer, 30 years his junior, in January 2015 in Dereham, Norfolk.[170] Fry lives in West Bilney in Norfolk. He became friends with King Charles III while Charles was Prince of Wales, through his work with The Prince's Trust. He attended the then-Prince's wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. He is also a friend of Rowan Atkinson and was best man at Atkinson's wedding to Sunetra Sastry at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. He was a friend of John Mills. His best friend is Hugh Laurie, whom he met while both were at Cambridge and with whom he has collaborated many times over the years. He was best man at Laurie's wedding and is godfather to all three of his children.
A fan of cricket, Fry has stated that he is related to former England cricketer C. B. Fry, and was interviewed for the Ashes Fever DVD, reporting on England's victory over Australia in the 2005 Ashes series. Regarding football, he is a supporter of Norwich City FC, and is a regular visitor to their home ground at Carrow Road. He has been described as "deeply dippy for all things digital" and claims to have bought the third Macintosh computer sold in the UK (his friend Douglas Adams bought the first two). He jokes that he has never encountered a smartphone that he has not purchased. 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 Wikipedia brings us all".
In 2023, during an 'Alternative Christmas message', broadcast on Channel 4, Fry remarked that he was proud of his Jewish heritage: "I've been on lists of British Jews that some ultra-right wing newspapers and sites have published over the years. And I'm frankly damned if I'll let antisemites be the ones who define me, and take ownership of the word "Jew", injecting it with their own spiteful venom. So I accept and claim the identity with pride, I am Stephen Fry, and I am a Jew.”
Politics
Fry was an active supporter of the Labour Party for many years and appeared in a party political broadcast on its behalf with Hugh Laurie and Michelle Collins in November 1993. He did not 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 praise of the Blair/Brown government's work on social reform, Fry was an outspoken critic of the Labour Party's Third Way concept. Fry appeared in campaign literature to support changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing members of parliament to the House of Commons in the Alternative Vote referendum of 2011
On 30 April 2008, Fry signed an open letter, published in The Guardian newspaper by a number of Jewish personalities, stating their opposition to celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. Furthermore, he is a signatory member of the British Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JJP) organisation, which campaigns for Palestinian rights. Fry was among over 100 signatories to a statement published by Sense about Science on 4 June 2009, condemning British libel laws and their use to "severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest". ]
In August 2013, Fry published an open letter to David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, and the International Olympic Committee calling for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, due to concerns over the state-sanctioned persecution of LGBT people in Russia under the 2013 anti-"gay propaganda" laws. Cameron stated on Twitter he believed "we can better challenge prejudice as we attend, rather than boycotting the Winter Olympics". Fry said in 2015 that the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre "has done more to damage the Britain I love than any single person".
In March 2014, Fry publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign towards press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable."
On 18 May 2018, Fry participated in the semi-annual Munk Debates in Toronto, Canada, where he argued against political correctness on the Con side of the topic "Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress..." alongside Jordan Peterson, and in opposition to Pro side represented by Michelle Goldberg and Michael Eric Dyson. During the debate, Fry paraphrased a famous sentence from the 1923 essay I Am Afraid, in which Old Bolshevik-turned-Soviet dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin denounced censorship in the Soviet Union. The original sentence reads, "True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." ] Fry's rendering, however, reads, "Progress is not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics." ]
On 1 February 2021, Fry supported the petition of two Holocaust survivors, Dorit Oliver-Wolff and Ruth Barnett who were asking to meet Prime Minister Boris Johnson regarding the 'genocide amendment' to the trade bill; this amendment would allow an independent parliamentary judicial committee to examine evidence of genocide.[ In a tweet, Fry highlighted the plight of the Uyghurs
Views on religion
Fry has repeatedly expressed opposition to organised religion, and has identified himself as an atheist and humanist, while declaring some sympathy for the ancient Greek belief in gods. In his first autobiography, he described how he once considered ordination to the Anglican priesthood, but came to the conclusion that he "couldn't believe in God, because [he] was fundamentally Hellenic in [his] outlook" He has stated that religion can have positive effects: "Sometimes belief means credulity, sometimes an expression of faith and hope which even the most sceptical atheist such as myself cannot but find inspiring." Fry claims to have been expelled from Salt Lake City, Utah, because of a joke made about doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In 2009, The Guardian published a letter from Fry addressing his younger self, explaining how his future is soon to unfold, reflecting on the positive progression towards gay acceptance and openness around him, and yet not everywhere, while warning on how "the cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more". Later that year, he and Christopher Hitchens participated in an "Intelligence Squared" debate in which they argued against Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan, who supported the view that the Catholic Church was a force for good. Fry and Hitchens argued that the church did more harm than good, and were declared the victors after an audience vote. Fry attacked the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality and denounced its wealth.
In 2010, Fry was made a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, stating: "it is essential to nail one's colours to the mast as a humanist." Later that year, Fry joined 54 other public figures in signing an open letter published in The Guardian stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom being a state visit. ] On 22 February 2011, Fry was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University.
When interviewed in 2015 by the Irish broadcaster Gay Byrne, Fry was asked what he would say if he came face-to-face with God, to which he replied: "Bone cancer in children: what's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that's not our fault? It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? Within days, the video was viewed over five million times. Fry later stated he did not refer to any specific religion: "I said quite a few things that were angry at this supposed God. I was merely saying things that Bertrand Russell and many finer heads of the mind have said for many thousands of years, going all the way back to the Greeks." ] "Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac." In May 2017 it was announced that Fry, along with broadcaster RTÉ, were under criminal investigation for blasphemy under the Defamation Act 2009, following a complaint from a member of the public about the broadcast: the case was dropped after Gardaí confirmed that they had not been able to locate a sufficient number of offended people The following year, in 2018, the article on blasphemy was removed from the Irish Constitution following a referendum.
He has praised Anglican priest Michael Coren's book The Rebel Christ, saying: "Integrity, wit and passion. A fine advocate for the best of Christian thought and a faith that encompasses the human as well as the divine."
Sport
In August 2010, Fry joined the board of directors at Norwich City Football Club. A lifelong fan of "the Canaries" and a regular visitor to Carrow Road, he said, on being appointed, "Truly this is one of the most exciting days of my life, and I am as proud and pleased as I could be." Fry stepped down from his Board position in January 2016, to take up a new position as "Norwich City Ambassador". Fry said, "My five years in the role have been an honour and a privilege beyond almost anything I can remember. I wish I could take credit for ushering the club up from League One to the Premiership during that time on the Board. Actually, I'm going to. It was all me. It can't have been a coincidence ... But now I'm so happy to relinquish my seat on the board to Thomas Smith and to engage as fully as I can in the role of ambassador for Norwich City." In February 2014, Fry became the honorary president of Proud Canaries, a new club for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender fans
Fry succeeded Clare Connor to become president of Marylebone Cricket Club on 1 October 2022, relinquishing the role after one year to his successor Mark Nicholas in 2023.