By Lydia Spencer-Elliott
Copyright independent
Stephen Fry has said the stability of marriage has helped him manage his bipolar disorder and he now feels much “calmer” and “happier” than when he was single.
The 68-year-old actor, screenwriter and author, married comedian Elliott Spencer in January 2015 after meeting at a house party in 2012. Spencer is 30 years Fry’s junior and was born in 1987.
“Bipolar is a chronic condition. It’s with you always, so I know that it’s in abeyance at the moment and I have my inhalers, as it were, to keep it at bay,” Fry told The Times.
The former QI host revealed in June that his secret to a long and happy relationship with Spencer was mutual cheerfulness that bolstered the other when they were feeling low.
“When you’re in the presence of a cheerful person, it makes everything better. They’re like their own sunshine,” he said.
“So that’s one of the things. If one is down, to help the other come up and understand each other’s differences as emotional human beings.”
The actor has been notoriously private about his relationship with Spencer, despite their 30-year age gap drawing significant attention. They have not been pictured together in public since 2019.
Elsewhere in the interview, Fry admitted he hadn’t enjoyed his time as a single man in the Eighties in London and focussed on work rather than pursuing relationships.
“I had a pathologically low view of my own desirability or ability to have a boyfriend, or anything of the kind,” he said.
“I so hated gay clubs, going in and seeing people just looking you up and down and turning away, and feeling so rejected.”
During that time, Fry humorously wrote in a piece for Tatler that he never had sex – and the reputation followed him for decades.
“For the next 10, 12 years, people would put the word ‘celibate’ in front of my name,” he said.
Fry was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1995, aged 37, after he vanished during a West End run of Simon Gray’s play Cell Mates and fled to Bruges in Belgium, contemplating suicide.
He has since become a major proponent for mental health awareness, exploring bipolar disorder in the documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive in 2006 and being named president of mental health charity Mind in 2011.
