Stephen Fry says he finds fame ‘exhausting’ and that suicide is always an option
Stephen Fry has said that he finds his celebrity ‘exhausting’ and that there’s every possibility he’d consider suicide one day.
In a TV interview to be screened tonight on Sky Arts 1 HD, the 53-year-old broadcaster, writer and actor talks candidly about suffering from bipolar disorder.
He says: “The fact that I am lucky enough not to have it so seriously doesn’t mean I won’t one day kill myself – I may well.”
In 1995 Mr Fry walked out of the West End production of Cell Mates, which had not received favourable reviews.
He fled to the continent and was untraceable for a week, leading to fears that he was dead. He later surfaced in Belgium.
Mr Fry later revealed he had come close to suicide at that time, considering gassing himself in his car but deciding against it for his parents’ sake.
He also says in the interview that “It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you. They want to touch the hem of the fame, not the hem of the person.
“You resort to not travelling on the Tube or walking round the street any more and going in a big car with a driver. And people think, ‘Oh, he thinks he’s so grand, doesn’t he?’ Well, no. I’d rather walk, but sometimes I just can’t.”
He added that he’d “love to close down for a number of years in some way and just be in the country making pork pies and chutneys.”
Mr Fry also discusses his years of cocaine addiction in the interview. He said that his primary reason for taking the drug was because it enhanced his love of crossword puzzles.
