Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out

Kenneth Branagh:
The first day of rehearsal of "Peter's Friends," he walked into the room where, uh, I was about to start directing him and the others, and, uh, I was about to say "good morning, Stephen," and he said "Beethoven was an extraordinary man!" "What?" "Beethoven was an extraordinary man! Mozart, even - even more so. To describe them as fit for purpose would be an understatement. They have a direct hotline to God. They - they - creatively, they're absolutely perfect and aesthete." "Stephen, what... what... what are you talking about? We're about to start rehearsing 'Peter's Friends,' our comtemporary film comedy." "Brahms is another one! Uh, Bach!" I said "Stephen, what... is going on?" "Well, they knew exactly what they were doing, they were wonderful at it, they were masters - " I said, "Are you feeling slightly self-conscious about rehearsing this dance?" "Yes! That's it, that's it, I don't want to dance. I've got this bloody awful body and I don't want to do it. I'm not Mozart and I'm not Beethoven." "Well, they weren't dancers, were they." And he went - I mean - *five minutes* of the most *brilliant* articulation of the nature of genius on the way to saying "I'm quite shy about doing the very silly dance where we all have to wear stockings and suspenders." But he could easily have said "uh, could we do this quite slowly and quietly, 'cos i'm a bit nervous." I hasten to add that all five of the other actors in that dance had done just that, it's just that they hadn't given the four-page speech that Stephen had.