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Sir Stephen Fry is a British actor and the narrator for the LittleBigPlanet series. As the Narrator, he guides the player through the basic mechanics of the game.
He is not only the narrator for the LittleBigPlanet games but has had a wide array of roles in various media across multiple decades. As one of the most literate, well-educated people in the United Kingdom, Stephen Fry adapts well to connecting older and younger generations alike to the LittleBigPlanet games. His charming way of twisting words instantly connects the player to the LittleBigPlanet world.
As the Narrator[]
The Narrator narrates the introductory cutscene in every game with one, which plays every time the game is loaded until the player chooses to skip it.
The Narrator is first heard in-game the Introduction level of each LittleBigPlanet game. The Narrator introduces the player to their Sackperson and teaches the player how to move in the environment. The Narrator also speaks in tutorial videos that appear in these levels, which teach the player other mechanics, such as using Costumes, the Popit, and expressions.
In most games, the Narrator introduces the player to the Pod and the Pod Computer (the menu through which levels and other content are selected). As the player discovers the first few new levels, as well as feature such as My Moon, the Narrator describes how to use these as well.
The first themes of each game have tutorial videos beyond those in the Introduction. Each of these themes has a level wherein the Narrator teaches the player how to use the Hold to Retry! function of the Popit.
When the player first loads an Empty Level on My Moon, the Narrator introduces the player to Create Mode, advising the player to visit the Tutorials to learn more about editing levels. In Tutorial levels, the Narrator demonstrates how to use the many features of Create Mode, often bickering with the Sackboy in the video about what Sackboy is doing.
From LittleBigPlanet 2 onwards, the Narrator speaks in the games' ending about the events of the game, delving into LittleBigPlanet's creative moral.
Biography[]
Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is a British actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside fellow British actor, Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster.
Since 2011, he has served as President of the mental health charity Mind.
Fry's film acting roles include playing his idol Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde (1997), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor; Inspector Thompson in Robert Altman's murder mystery Gosford Park (2001); and Mr. Johnson in Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship (2016). He has also made appearances in the films Chariots of Fire (1981), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), and The Hobbit film series. His television roles include Lord Melchett in the BBC television comedy series Blackadder and the title character in the television series Kingdom and Absolute Power, as well as a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the American crime series Bones. 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 the longtime host of the BBC television quiz show QI, with his tenure lasting from 2003 to 2016, during which he was nominated for six British Academy Television Awards. He appears frequently on other panel games, such as Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
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Besides working in television, Fry has been a prolific writer, contributing to newspapers and magazines and having written four novels and three autobiographies: Moab Is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles, and More Fool Me. He is also known for his voice-over work; he read all seven of the Harry Potter novels for UK audiobook recordings, narrated the video game series LittleBigPlanet and Birds of Steel, lent his voice to an animated series of explanations of the laws of cricket, and narrated a series of animations about humanism for Humanists UK.
In the 2025 New Year Honours, Fry was knighted for service to environmental and mental health awareness.[1]
Early Life[]
Stephen John Fry was born in the Hampstead area of London on 24 August 1957, the son of Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman) and physicist and inventor Alan John Fry (1930–2019). He has an elder brother, Roger, and a younger sister, Joanna. His paternal grandmother had roots in Cheshire and Kent. The Fry family originates around the Shillingstone and Blandford areas of Dorset; in the early 1800s, Samuel Fry settled in Surrey, with his descendants residing in Middlesex. In his autobiographical writings and elsewhere, Fry has claimed relationship to the Fry family that founded the eponymous chocolate company, John Fry (one of the signatories to the death warrant for Charles I), and the cricketer C. B. Fry. Fry's mother is Jewish, but he was not brought up in a religious family. His maternal grandparents, Martin and Rosa Neumann, were Hungarian Jews who emigrated from Šurany (now in Slovakia) to the UK in 1927. Rosa's parents, who originally lived in Vienna, were sent to a concentration camp in Riga, where they were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. His mother's aunt and cousins were sent to Auschwitz and Stutthof and never seen again.
Fry grew up in the village of Booton, Norfolk, having moved at an early age from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where he had attended Chesham Preparatory School. He briefly attended Cawston Primary School in Cawston, Norfolk, before going on to Stouts Hill Preparatory School in Uley, Gloucestershire, at the age of seven, and then to Uppingham School in Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius". He took his O-Levels in 1972 at the age of 14 and passed all except physics but was expelled from Uppingham half a term into the sixth form. He was later dismissed from Paston School, a grant-maintained grammar school that refused to let him progress to study A-Levels.
Fry moved to Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, where, after two years in the sixth form studying English, French, and History of Art, he ultimately failed his A-Levels, not turning up for his English and French papers. Over the summer, Fry absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend. He had taken a coat when leaving a pub, planning to spend the night sleeping rough, but had then discovered the card in a pocket. He was arrested in Swindon and, as a result, spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison on remand. Following his release, he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously and sit the Cambridge entrance exams. In the summer of 1977, he passed two A-Levels in English and French, with grades of A and B. He also received a grade A in an alternative O-Level in the Study of Art and scored a distinction in an S-Level paper in English. Having successfully passed the entrance exams in autumn 1977, Fry was offered a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge, for matriculation in autumn 1978, briefly teaching at Cundall Manor, a preparatory school in North Yorkshire, before taking his place. At Cambridge, he joined the Footlights, appeared on University Challenge, and read for a degree in English Literature, graduating with upper second-class honours. Fry also met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie at Cambridge and starred alongside him in the Footlights.
Comedy[]
Fry's career in television began with the 1982 broadcasting of The Cellar Tapes, the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue which was written by Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. The revue caught the attention of Granada Television, who, keen to replicate the success of the BBC's Not the Nine O'Clock News, hired Fry, Laurie and Thompson to star alongside Ben Elton in There's Nothing to Worry About. A second series, retitled Alfresco, was broadcast in 1983, and a third in 1984; it established Fry and Laurie's reputation as a comedy double act. In 1983, the BBC offered Fry, Laurie and Thompson their own show, which became The Crystal Cube, a mixture of science fiction and mockumentary that was cancelled after the first episode. Undeterred, Fry and Laurie appeared in an episode of The Young Ones in 1984, and Fry also appeared in Ben Elton's 1985 Happy Families series. In April 1986, Fry was among the British comedians who appeared in the first live telethon Comic Relief. In 1986 and 1987, Fry and Laurie performed sketches on the LWT/Channel 4 show Saturday Live.
Forgiving Fry and Laurie for The Crystal Cube, the BBC commissioned, in 1986, a sketch show that was to become A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Following a 1987 pilot, the programme ran for 26 episodes across four series between 1989 and 1995. During this time, Fry starred in Blackadder II as Lord Melchett, made a guest appearance in Blackadder the Third as the Duke of Wellington, then returned to a starring role in Blackadder Goes Forth, as General Melchett. In a 1988 television special, Blackadder's Christmas Carol, he played the roles of Lord Melchett and Lord Frondo. Between 1990 and 1993, Fry starred as Jeeves (alongside Hugh Laurie's Bertie Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster, 23 hour-long adaptations of P. G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories.
Towards the end of 2003, Fry starred alongside John Bird in the television adaptation of Absolute Power, previously a radio series on BBC Radio 4. In 2010, Fry took part in a Christmas series of short films called Little Crackers. His short was based on a story from his childhood at school. He appeared as the Christian God in 2011's Holy Flying Circus. In January 2016, it was announced that Fry would be appearing as the character "Cuddly Dick" in Series 3 of the Sky One family comedy Yonderland. In 2016, Fry had a lead role in the American sitcom The Great Indoors. He portrayed an outdoor magazine publisher helping to ease his best worldly reporter (Joel McHale) into a desk job. The show was cancelled after one season.
He reprised his role as (a descendant of) Lord Melchett for The Big Night In, a 20 April 2020 telethon held during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a skit which he held a video call with Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who made a surprise appearance.
Drama[]
Fry has appeared in a number of BBC adaptations of plays and books, including a 1992 adaptation of the Simon Gray play The Common Pursuit (he had previously appeared in the West End stage production); a 1998 Malcolm Bradbury adaptation of the Mark Tavener novel In the Red, taking the part of the Controller of BBC Radio 2; and in 2000 in the role of Professor Bellgrove in the BBC serial Gormenghast, which was adapted from the first two novels of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. In 2011, Fry portrayed Professor Mildeye in the BBC adaptation of Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers.
Fry narrated the first two seasons of the English-language version of the Spanish children's animated series Pocoyo. From 2007 to 2009, Fry played the lead role in (and was executive producer for) the legal drama Kingdom, which ran for three series on ITV1. He has also taken up a recurring guest role as FBI psychiatrist Dr. (later chef) Gordon Wyatt in the popular American drama Bones. In 2010, having learned some Irish for the role, he filmed a cameo role in Ros na Rún, an Irish-language soap opera broadcast in Ireland, Scotland and the US. In 2014, he began starring alongside Kiefer Sutherland and William Devane in 24: Live Another Day as British Prime Minister Alastair Davies.
In November 2019, it was announced that Fry would guest star in "Spyfall", the two-part opening episode of Doctor Who's twelfth series, which was broadcast on New Year's Day 2020.
Documentaries[]
Fry's first documentary was the Emmy Award-winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006. The same year, he appeared on the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are, tracing his maternal family tree to investigate his Jewish ancestry. Fry narrated The Story of Light Entertainment, which was shown from July–September 2006. In 2007, he presented a documentary on the subject of HIV and AIDS, HIV and Me.
On 7 May 2008, Fry gave a speech as part of a series of BBC lectures on the future of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, which he later recorded for a podcast. His six-part travel series Stephen Fry in America began on BBC One in October 2008 and saw him travel to each of the 50 US states. In the same year, he narrated the nature documentaries Spectacled Bears: Shadow of the Forest for the BBC Natural World series. In the 2009 television series Last Chance to See, Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine sought out endangered species, some of which had been featured in Douglas Adams' and Carwardine's 1990 book and radio series of the same name.
In August 2011, Stephen Fry's 100 Greatest Gadgets was shown on Channel 4 as one of the 100 Greatest strands. His choice for the greatest gadget was the cigarette lighter, which he described as "fire with a flick of the fingers". In the same month, the nature documentary series Ocean Giants, narrated by Fry, premiered. In September 2011, Fry's Planet Word, a five-part documentary about language, aired on BBC HD and BBC Two. In November 2011, an episode of Living the Life Featured Fry in an intimate conversation discussing his life and career with Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman.
At the 2012 Pride of Britain Awards shown on ITV on 30 October, Fry, along with Michael Caine, Elton John, Richard Branson and Simon Cowell, recited Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—" in tribute to the 2012 British Olympic and Paralympic athletes. In November 2012, Fry hosted gadgets show called Gadget Man, exploring the usefulness of various gadgets in different daily situations to improve the livelihoods of everyone. In October 2013, Fry presented Stephen Fry: Out There, a two-part documentary in which he explores attitudes to homosexuality and the lives of gay people in different parts of the globe.
On Christmas Day 2013, Fry featured with adventurer Bear Grylls in an episode of Channel 4's Bear's Wild Weekends. Over the course of two days, in the Italian Dolomites, Fry travelled on the skids of a helicopter, climbed down a raging 500-foot waterfall, slept in a First World War trench and abseiled down a towering cliff face. In June 2015, Fry was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His favourite piece was the String Quartet No. 14 by Beethoven. His book choice was Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot and his luxury item was "canvasses, easels, brushes, an instruction manual".
Film[]
Having made his film début in the 1985 film The Good Father, Fry had a brief appearance in A Fish Called Wanda (in which he is knocked out by Kevin Kline, who is posing as an airport security man), and then appeared as the eponymous Peter in Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends in 1992. In the 1994 romantic comedy film I.Q., he played the role of James Moreland. Portraying his idol Oscar Wilde (of whom he had been an ardent admirer since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde, he fulfilled to critical acclaim a role that he has said he was "born to play". It also earned him a nomination for Best Actor – Drama in the 1998 Golden Globe Award. In 1997, he also had a cameo in the Spice Girls film Spice World. A year later, Fry starred in David Yates' small independent film The Tichborne Claimant, and in 2001, he played the detective in Robert Altman's period costume drama, Gosford Park. In the same year, he also appeared in the Dutch film The Discovery of Heaven, directed by Jeroen Krabbé and based on the novel by Harry Mulisch.
In 2003, Fry made his directorial début with Bright Young Things, adapted by him from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. In 2001, he began hosting the BAFTA Film Awards, a role from which he stepped down in 2006. Later that same year, he wrote the English libretto and dialogue for Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of The Magic Flute.
Fry continues to make regular film appearances, notably in treatments of literary cult classics. He portrayed Maurice Woodruff in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, served as narrator in the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in 2005 appeared in both A Cock and Bull Story, based on Tristram Shandy, and V for Vendetta, as a closeted TV presenter who challenges the fascist state. The Wachowskis pointed out that it was Fry's "normalcy" in the face of the insanity of the censorship of BTV that makes his character truly powerful and adds a "wholly unexpected dimension to the film". In 2006, he played the role of gadget-master Smithers in Stormbreaker, and in 2007, he appeared as himself hosting a quiz in St Trinian's. In 2007, Fry wrote, for director Peter Jackson, a script for a remake of The Dam Busters. He also appeared that year in Eichmann.
Fry was offered a role in Valkyrie but was unable to participate. Fry starred in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, as the voice of the Cheshire Cat. He played Mycroft Holmes in the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, directed by Guy Ritchie. He portrayed the Master of Lake-town in two of Peter Jackson's three film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit: the second The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the third The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Fry also starred in the 2018 heist comedy film The Con Is On, previously titled The Brits Are Coming.
Video Games[]
Fry's distinctive voice has been featured in a number of video games, including an appearance as Reaver, an amoral supporting character in Lionhead Studios games Fable II and Fable III, and as the narrator of the LittleBigPlanet series. He also narrated the first four Harry Potter games: Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire. He also narrates a section of Bungie's Destiny 2 expansion Warmind as the "Concierge"; an AI that, when interacted with at certain points, will give the player background information on Bray Exoscience.
- ^ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ln96d4yyeo