Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.— Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, "Thou Shalt Always Kill"
A man of intense intelligence and great coolness,
Stephen Fry is the host of
QI and starred in
Kingdom, about the life of a rural lawyer. He has also written and contributed to several books, namely
The Liar Novel,
The Stars' Tennis Balls.
,
The Hippopotamus.
and "Making History" (a time travel story about
erasing Hitler from existence), as well as his autobiography
Moab Is My Washpot
(a second volume, called
The Fry Chronicles, is now out), and
The Book of General Ignorance. He is very much the modern day
Oscar Wilde (though he's English) as well as a British national treasure.
A Cambridge graduate and a personal friend of
J. K. Rowling (he won a Talkie for his reading of the
Harry Potter unabridged audio-books), he has appeared as
several Melchettes in
Blackadder, played Jeeves in
Jeeves and Wooster, portrayed
Oscar Wilde in
Wilde, and starred as Fry in
A Bit of Fry and Laurie. His reading of the
Harry Potter audiobooks is a
Crowning Moment of Awesome for his acting abilities. Not only is his voice acting superb, the sheer breadth and convincingness of the accents he puts on for the various characters is stunning. Excellent accents are a particular quality of his.
He is openly gay (90% gay anyway) -
which might surprise some people - and open about having bipolar disorder. His early life resulted in him doing three months in prison for credit card fraud. On his release, he got a scholarship to Cambridge and joined the Cambridge Footlights, where he met
Hugh Laurie through
a mutual friend.
It is a sign of how well liked he is that when he vanished from a stage production he was a part of, literally missing his cue, and couldn't be found in the building, the British Tabloids published concerned articles asking him to come home, rather than the usual cruel mockery an actor would have got for such highly advanced stage fright. He only got a token mocking when he turned up in Belgium.
He also has a recurring role in
Bones. He appeared in
V For Vendetta (as Gordon Deitrich, a
closeted comedy television show host), as the Guide in the film version of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (mostly as a favor to the family of his late friend
Douglas Adams) in which he also displayed his awesome musical talents in the soundtrack with the bonus techno-rap song "Reasons to Be Miserable", is the narrator of the
Little Big Planet video game series (reprising the role in
Play Station All Stars Battle Royale), and voiced the narrator in
Pocoyo, Hedonistic
Sociopathic Hero Reaver in the
Fable games, and played the main character of
Absolute Power. He made his directorial debut in 2003 with the film
Bright Young Things, for which he also wrote the screenplay, adapted from
Evelyn Waugh's 1930 novel
Vile Bodies.
He's produced and
hosted two very personal documentaries,
HIV and Me
and
The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive
, which was the result of the aforementioned disappearance to Belgium and eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
* both links to trailers
He was scheduled to write an episode of
Doctor Who, but the idea fell through due to time constraints on his part.
In addition, he has
a lovely, comforting voice.
He has featured on
Top Gear as the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car", having lost about seven stone before the episode, as he went on a diet, prompting Jeremy Clarkson to ask where the rest of him was.
He also played Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's older, cleverer, but
indolent brother) in Guy Ritchie's
Sherlock Holmes sequel. This was something of a
Promoted Fanboy moment for him, as he says in his autobiography
Moab Is My Washpot that he's been a fan of
Sherlock Holmes since he was a small boy.
He's
claimed
that
Douglas Adams once told him in confidence "
exactly why 42." Apparently, "The answer is fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it,
completely obvious." However, he has vowed to
take the secret with him to the grave.
A self-confessed techie, averaging
about a dozen Tweets per day
, he is also a
vocal supporter of Free Software
while still being a diehard Apple fanboy, famously purchasing the third Mac sold in the UK after Douglas Adams bought the first two (Adams always insisted it was the other way round but appears to have lost the argument by dint of dying first). Although he's also admitted that he does enjoy switching between a HTC Desire (an Android phone) and an iPhone in a recent Twitter post.
"I've never made a secret of my admiration for HTC and Android. Happy to flip between iPhone and Desire." - 6:25 AM Jun 12th via Twitter for Android (2010).
He now has
his own theme song
, courtesy of the good people known as
Weebl & co, which enjoys definite
Earworm status. As you may have surmised from this page, he has a very devoted fan base,
some of whom are just mildly creepy, in a nerdily sweet sort of way
.
Oh, and, apparently,
BRIAN BLESSED calls him "Spunkbubble".
Tropes demonstrated by Stephen Fry:
Now go back and reread this entire page in Stephen's voice, if you haven't been doing so already. Cheerio!