Stephen Fry: My love of Beethoven helps to overcome depression
STEPHEN FRY has said he turns to Beethoven to fight depression.
The comedian and actor, 62, has been open about his bipolar disorder and has attempted to take his own life several times, most recently in 2012.
Fry appeared on a podcast, the Art of Change: Nothing Concrete, and told how his love of Beethoven eased his mentalhealth problems.
He said: “There is a healing quality to listening to it that helps. When combined with not drinking too much and walking and eating properly and all the other things that supposedly help one’s mental health.”
Fry added: “One of the ways I cope with it is to bathe myself in music like Beethoven’s and to think of people who have gone before me who have been lit by the flame of mania and doused by the icy water of depression and lived those lives of flaring up and going down and being close to the edge and how they have managed to do things and to achieve things and to retain their love and hope – and one clings to that.”
Meanwhile, he is returning to the world of Harry Potter to read a chapter from The Philosopher’s Stone for a JK Rowling project.
Fry narrated the audio books for the series about the boy wizard between 1999 and 2007.
He has now re-read The Keeper of the Keys, the fourth chapter of the opening book, for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter At Home online hub, which was launched for children, parents, carers and teachers during the Covid-19 outbreak.
He said it was “wholly charming” to say those words again.