Stephen Fry is an English actor, host, author, director, LGBTQ+ advocate, cancer survivor, and president of mental health charity Mind who has been a staple of English media for decades.
Related: Stephen Fry Opens Up on His Secret Battle With Prostate Cancer
Back in 2007, the 67-year-old was asked when he first knew and acknowledged his sexuality. Humorously, he told Digital Spy:
“I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself: ‘That’s the last time I’m going up one of those.'”
Fry has a flair for words and humor, which is easy to believe given his close friendships with fellow witty actors Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie. In fact, his sharp wit and talent for wordplay grew from his belief that he “was so terrible at everything in school,” that he turned to language as an outlet, a fact which he revealed in an interview with The Talks.
It was difficult for Stephen to keep his sexuality a secret during his teenage years, and even after coming out, he stayed celibate until the mid-1990s. Because of this, Stephen was given the nickname ‘Celibate Stephen.’ During this time, Stephen said his self-confidence was “so low that he abstained from sex for 16 years.” More recently, he shared with The Times:
“In the Eighties, I was known as Celibate Stephen. I was so excited by my work that I forgot to have sex. It was also fear: I always felt rejected in gay bars. I couldn’t dance; I didn’t look cool. All I wanted was to sit and talk.”
The AIDS epidemic was a scary time in history both in society and in health. So Stephen felt that it was a “lucky” period for him to be celibate considering the amount of friends he lost to the AIDS epidemic.
The talented Englishman is married to long-time partner, comedian, actor, and writer Elliott Spencer who he met in 2012 through mutual acquaintances. The couple have quite a wide age gap of 30 years. Nevertheless, Spencer spoke lovingly of Fry, saying:
“I don’t care what people think, Stephen is the love of my life, the light of my life.”
The two married in 2015 after Fry proposed to Spencer with a ring carefully placed on the prongs of a dinner fork. The night was a humorous and splendid moment:
“He [Spencer] came back and he started chatting and he started playing with the fork and I thought, ‘For God’s sake look at the fork’ — you don’t really ever look at forks do you — and I thought, ‘He’s going to pick it up and the ring is going to fly off into that lady’s soup…’ “
Sources: The Talks, The Times, Digital Spy, People