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Stephen Fry tried to kill himself last year.
The 55-year-old actor ? who suffers from bipolar disorder and is president of the mental health charity Mind ? admitted he attempted suicide last year but was saved by his producer at the time, who found him unconscious in a hotel room after taking pills with vodka.
In conversation with fellow comedian Richard Herring, recorded before a live audience at the Leicester Square Theatre, Stephen said, "I am the victim of my own moods, more than most people are perhaps, in as much as I have a condition which requires me to take medication so that I don't get either too hyper or too depressed to the point of suicide.
"I would go as far as to tell you that I attempted it last year, so I'm not always happy ? this is the first time I've said this in public, but I might as well. I'm president of Mind, and the whole point in my role as I see it is not to be shy and to be forthcoming about the morbidity and genuine nature of the likelihood of death among people with certain mood disorders.
"It was a close-run thing. I took a huge number of pills and a huge [amount] of vodka and the mixture of them made my body convulse so much that I broke four ribs, but I was still unconscious. And fortunately the producer I was filming with at the time came into the hotel room and I was found in a sort of unconscious state and taken back to England and looked after."
Stephen ? who previously attempted suicide in 1995 ? revealed his family and friends were shocked by the events last year.
At the talk, reported on comedy.co.uk, he said, "There is no 'why'; it's not the right question. There's no reason. If there were a reason for it you could reason someone out of it and you could tell them why they shouldn't take their own life.
"All my friends when they heard about this, and my family when they eventually heard about it, came to visit me in the hospital [and] said, 'Why didn't you call?' ”
-Bang Showbiz
