Much loved actor, TV presenter and author Stephen Fry has made a rare comment about his marriage to husband Elliot Spencer.
The couple announced their engagement in 2015 and married soon afterwards. They first met at a house party two years earlier. The couple are rarely seen together in public, and Fry rarely comments on their relationship.
In a new interview with Rylan Clark for his BBC podcast Rylan: How to Be in Love, Fry opened up about what’s made their now decade long marriage a success, with Fry saying their 30 year age gap gave them things to talk about.
The new series follows on from Rylan Clark’s previous series How to Be in Spotlight. Each episode he chats to a different celebrity about their thoughts on the topic.
Fry shared that he became aware of his sexuality when he was around thirteen or fourteen and a boarding school student, and he details some of his early experiences of looking for love.
When he left university though, Fry says he became fully focused on work, and at the same time the shadow of the HIV epidemic had a big impact.
“Work replaced love.” Fry shared. “Sex and love were the last things I wanted, sex in particular because as it so happened, by cruel twist of fate, the year I left university and went to live in London and make my fortune as it were was 1981.”
The arrival of the HIV epidemic meant the young Stephen Fry was suddenly going to the funerals of friends who were the same age. He says the combination of being obsessed with work and being afraid of HIV meant he lived a celibate life for 15 years.
Fry said his life changed in 1995 after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and he found himself approaching life in a different way, and soon after he was asking out a man who lived nearby his London home. They were together for 14 years.
At a party he met Elliot Spencer, who was 30 years younger. Fry says he never thinks about their age gap nowadays.
“Oscar Wilde said ‘I love the young, they have so much more experience’, and its true.” Fry said, sharing the through Spencer he’d come to appreciate different things like rapper Kendrick Lamar and the world WWE.
Fry said he couldn’t share the secret of a long term relationship, but only the secret to a long term relationship with Elliot Spencer.
“But I guess it’s all the normal human virtues – some of which are forgotten virtues – but one of the most important human virtues, I think, isn’t even really considered a virtue, but it is one that changes the world.
“And it’s not kindness, which obviously is important, but it’s a subset of kindness, perhaps – and it’s cheerfulness.”
“When you’re in the presence of a cheerful person, it makes everything better. They’re like their own sunshine. 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.
Fry also said a key was understanding how each other are different and adjusting for those differences.
