Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, comedian and writer.
He and Hugh Laurie are the comic double act Fry and Laurie, who starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster.
Fry's acting roles include a Golden Globe Award–nominated lead performance in the film Wilde, Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom, a recurring guest role as Dr Gordon Wyatt on the crime series Bones, and as Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V for Vendetta. 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 also the long-time host of the BBC television quiz show QI, with his tenure lasting from 2003 to 2016.
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, The Fry Chronicles, and More Fool Me. He also appears frequently on BBC Radio 4, starring in the comedy series Absolute Power, being a frequent guest on panel games such as Just a Minute, and acting as chairman during one series of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where he was one of a trio of possible hosts who were tried out to succeed the late Humphrey Lyttelton, Jack Dee getting the post permanently.
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 Humanists UK.
Occupation:
actor, playwright, writer, comedian, TV presenter, public figure, blogger
— In 1900 there was a sport where Britain won a gold medal, in which the only other country that competed was France. Can you imagine what that might have been?
— Arrogance?
— The point we're making about polar bears is that these are animals that can run at 30 miles an hour, and what you certainly shouldn't do is try to run away from them...
— That's why you should always be with a friend if you encounter a polar bear, because you can't outrun the polar bear; you don't need to. You just need to outrun your friend.
— Very good. Cynical, but excellent.
— It cost 105,000 pounds last year to clean up the pigeon crap from Trafalgar Square.
— Where do pigeons get that sort of money?
<...>
— What else is interesting about pigeons? They can suck.
— Is that how they raised the 105,000?
— I'll give you an extra two points if you can tell me the longest fence in the world.
— The Great Fence of China!
— It's to keep people off the Great Wall. About ten feet away from it.
One day the answer might be "Dave", one day the answer might be "a blue whale", and what I'm looking forward to is when we have "a blue whale called Dave" and you don't get it.