Stephen John Fry was born in Hampstead, London (UK) on 24 August 1957. At 17, after leaving Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, 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 Prison on remand. Following his release, he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously to sit the Cambridge entrance exams. He scored well enough to gain a scholarship to Queens’ College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Fry joined the Footlights, appeared on University Challenge, and read for a degree in English literature, graduating with upper second-class honours. Fry also met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie at Cambridge and starred alongside him in the Footlights.
Between 1986 and 1995, Hugh and Stephen made 26 episodes of ‘A Bit Of Fry & Laurie’, a very successful series of comedy shows for BBC television. During this time, Stephen Fry also appeared in the Blackadder series starring Rowan Atkinson.
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); a 1998 Malcolm Bradbury adaptation of the Mark Tavener novel ‘In the Red’ and in 2000 in the role of Professor Bellgrove in the BBC serial ‘Gormenghast’. 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 ITV. In 2014 he starred alongside Kiefer Sutherland and William Devane in ’24: Live Another Day’ as British Prime Minister Alastair Davies.
Besides working in television, Fry has contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines and written four novels and three volumes of autobiography, ‘Moab Is My Washpot’ (1997), ‘The Fry Chronicles’ (2010) and ‘More Fool Me’ (2014). Fry is also known for his voice-overs, reading all seven of the ‘Harry Potter’ novels for the UK audiobook recordings, narrating the LittleBigPlanet and Birds of Steel series of video games, as well as an animated series of explanations of the laws of cricket, and a series of animations about Humanism for the British Humanist Association.
For Kate Bush, Stephen Fry is credited as ‘Prof. Joseph Yupik’, reciting the 50 words for snow on her song 50 Words For Snow.
References
- Stephen Fry. Wikipedia, retrieved 23 September 2017.