Stephen Fry tried to kill himself in 2012.
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, 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 amongst 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 said 'Why didn't you call?'"
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