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Stephen Fry - "It would be lovely to turn into a teddy bear for the young, as it were, a kind of amiable eccentric."
According to the sleeve notes of his autobiography, most of Stephen's present life is spent trying to be good. He rarely succeeds, yet he still tries. He no longer steals, cheats or lies nearly as much as he used to. He still talks too much, and he still has an annoying flop of schoolboy hair that seventeen of London's most expensive and absurd hairdressers have been able to do nothing about.
Heinous crimes indeed. However, two things that Stephen definitely cannot be accused of being are bland or predictable and perhaps that's why I am such a dedicated admirer of his work. He truely is a man of many talents: actor, novelist, humourist, reviewer, philosopher, parodist, screen writer, autobiographer, academic, drama queen, clown and, as often as not, a gigantic mixture of all these and more and you get the impression that he really does strive to excel himself in everything that he does.
Stephen Fry was born to Alan (an inventor and thoroughly clever chap) and Marianne on 24th August 1957 in Hampstead, London but the family moved to Norfolk when he was 6. The Stephenesque signs were seemingly apparent even in the early years of his life and his mother Marianne said in 1997, "At home, Stephen was cheerful, affectionate, kind, bouncy and full of more insatiable curiosity than an elephant's child. He soaked up information, then demanded more. He would offer to help dry up the dishes, but only if I agreed to ask him questions. 'What is the capital of Bolivia? Who said of whom Let him win his spurs at the battle of Crecy? Who is the Norse god of war?' And so on, until I dried up."
His family must have been pretty well-off financially because Stephen went through the upper class rigmarole of prep and public school followed by university, throughout which time he was not always on his best behaviour, as is very thoroughly documented in his autobiography, Moab is my Washpot. At least some of these educational establishments did not throw him out but he was somewhat wild during his teenage years leading notoriously to three months in prison for credit card fraud at the age of 17. However, he did set himself back on the right track because after he had served his sentence, he pulled himself together somewhat and went on to attend Queens College, Cambridge in 1979, finishing with a 2:1 in English in 1981/2. Whilst at Cambridge, he met Hugh Laurie (and also became acquainted with Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery amongst others) with whom he formed a strong bond and a prolific writing partnership. He wrote his first play Latin! or Tobacco and Boys in 1980 which won the Fringe First at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival and in 1984, Stephen was hired to do the rewrite of the Noel Gay musical "Me and My Girl", which made him a millionaire before the age of 30.
Throughout the 1980's, Stephen did a huge amount of witty and erudite television and radio work as well as writing for newspapers and magazines but I suppose he is most well known in the UK for the character Melchett that he played in various series of Blackadder (the second and fourth series chiefly), his portrayal of the personal valet/manservant Jeeves in four series of Jeeves and Wooster, which was just perfect, and also his popular comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie, with Hugh Laurie of course - "Fry and Laurie exploit the foibles of English upper-middle class gentility and middle-strata pretentiousness with the infectious humour of giggling public schoolboys. They also have a penchant for caricaturing working-class habits with an incisive wit and insight. They are comedians for all seasons. Stephen Fry is tall and eccentric. Wearing corduroy trousers he looks every inch the Cambridge don with the physique of a broken-nosed rugby player. Hugh Laurie is also tall, but not as thick-set. With large expressive eyes and a mop of curly hair, he has the appearance of an unruly schoolboy who likes a prank."
These days, Stephen continues to do a lot of acting, is about to make his directorial debut on a Film Four production of Bright Young Things, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, makes regular TV appearances and recently did a very good job of hosting the 2002 British Academy Awards (BAFTAS) which he also did last year, and which have been the Academy's two most successful years. The BBC have been hauling Stephen in regularly of late to host such events, obviously twigging on to his talent for standing up in front of an audience and turning a boring, dry event into an half decent one. Stephen has also turned up in Peru this year for a couple more BBC programmes, apparently in search of the hard to track down Paddington Bear.
"I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn."
stephen's authorised web site
page last meddled with on 6th October 2002.
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