Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry, born on 24 August 1957 in the Hampstead area of London, is a British actor, writer, comedian, and broadcaster whose career has spanned theatre, television, film, and literature. He is the son of historian Marianne Eve Fry and physicist and inventor Alan John Fry, and grew up in the village of Booton, Norfolk. After a turbulent early education that included expulsion from Uppingham School and a three-month stay at Pucklechurch Remand Centre following an arrest in Swindon, Fry earned a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature and graduated with an upper second-class honours degree in 1981. It was at Cambridge that he joined the Footlights and first encountered Hugh Laurie, through their mutual friend Emma Thompson, beginning a creative partnership that would define much of his early career.

Fry's professional work began in earnest with the 1981 Footlights Revue, The Cellar Tapes, which won the Perrier Comedy Award. He subsequently appeared in the sketch comedy series Alfresco from 1983 to 1984 and the sitcom Blackadder from 1986 to 1989. Alongside Laurie, he co-starred in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which ran from 1989 to 1995, and Jeeves and Wooster from 1990 to 1993. His later television work includes the series Kingdom from 2007 to 2009, recurring appearances on Bones between 2007 and 2017, and a role in It's a Sin in 2021. From 2003 to 2016, Fry hosted the comedy panel show QI, earning six British Academy Television Award nominations over the course of his tenure. In 2006, a public poll conducted by ITV ranked him ninth among television's fifty greatest stars.

His film career began with Chariots of Fire in 1981 and has since included A Fish Called Wanda, Gosford Park, V for Vendetta, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and Love and Friendship, among others. He voiced the Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 2010 and its 2016 sequel, and portrayed the Master of Lake-town across the three-film adaptation of The Hobbit between 2013 and 2014. His performance as Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film Wilde earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor. Between 2001 and 2017, he hosted the British Academy Film Awards on twelve occasions.

Fry's connection to Broadway dates to his 1984 adaptation of the 1930s musical Me and My Girl for the West End, where the production ran for eight years and received two Laurence Olivier Awards. When the show transferred to Broadway, Fry received a Tony Award nomination for his work on the book, and the production earned him a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book in 1987. His second Broadway appearance came in 2013, when he reprised the role of Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night, a comedy he had first performed at Shakespeare's Globe in 2012. The production moved to the West End before transferring to Broadway, where Fry received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

Beyond performance and adaptation, Fry has maintained a substantial presence as a writer and documentary presenter. He has authored four novels and three autobiographies, and has contributed regularly to newspapers and magazines. His documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, broadcast in 2006, won an Emmy Award. He also presented the travel series Stephen Fry in America in 2008. Fry narrated the audiobooks for all seven Harry Potter novels as well as the Paddington Bear books. Since 2011, he has served as president of the mental health charity Mind. In 2025, he was knighted for services to mental health awareness, the environment, and charity, and that same year he played Lady Bracknell in the National Theatre production of The Importance of Being Earnest, a role he continued into early 2026.