Morrissey (full name Steven Patrick Morrissey), has a reputation for being perpetually morose, which he earned with the 1984 song "
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by his band The Smiths. He's copped to suffering from depression, but in 2017 he said, "I'm really not that miserable. I'm not an unhappy person."
Morrissey is a cousin of former Republic of Ireland footballer Robbie Keane.
He has been a strict vegetarian since the age of 11. Morrissey told Larry King; "I became vegetarian first when I was very young when I caught sight of a programme on the television showing slaughter and I'd never seen it before, the abattoir, the slaughterhouse. I was frozen for five years. I couldn't believe that in our society such places exist."
Morrissey was involved in Manchester's punk rock scene during the late 1970s. His fronted the Nosebleeds a job he landed after responding to an advert placed by guitarist Billy Duffy (who'd later join The Cult) in Virgin Records.
He rose to prominence as the lead singer of The Smiths during the 1980s. After the band split in 1987, Morrissey carved out a solo career, making the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart on 10 occasions. When The Smiths were active, they cracked the Top 10 just twice.
The young Morrissey was a keen fan of the UK television soap Coronation Street, which is set in a fictional town in the Manchester area. The proud Manc authored a number of scripts and storylines for the series which he sent to the show's production company, Granada TV, but all were rejected. However Morrissey had a cycle-on part as an extra.
Morrissey's Autobiography topped the British bestseller lists when it was published in 2013. It appeared under the Penguin Classics imprint, a rare designation for a living writer.
His debut novel List Of The Lost was picked as the 2015 winner for The Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award. Morrissey did not attend the ceremony on December 1, 2015. He told Uruguayan newspaper El Observador that he felt it was "best to maintain an indifferent distance" from the award.
Morrissey was offered a cameo role on the American sitcom Friends when he was visiting the set. He was asked to jump in on a newly jumbled plot-line where he'd appear with Phoebe in the Central Perk diner singing "in a really depressing voice'. According to his autobiography, Morrissey fled "down the fire-escape like a serpent."
He was the victim of an attempted kidnapping in September 2007. Morrissey alleges in his autobiography that he was targeted by Mexican kidnappers after performing a 2007 concert at El Foro in Tijuana. His driver veered off the highway down a dark road. Fortunately, he and his security guard managed to leave the car safely, but they found themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Morrissey is a cat lover. He told the London Sunday Times:
"My best friends have been cats. I had one cat for 23 years and one for 22. They just walked into the house, one when I was a small child and one when I was slightly older. I won't say they were like children, because I don't know any children that are actually nice. They were black-and-white and called Buster and Tibby."
He's very popular in the Latinx community of Southern California. In the '00s, he lived in Hollywood and played a lot of shows in the area.
True to form, he stays off social media and claims he never owned a smartphone. His management runs Facebook and Instagram pages for him and maintains his official website,
Morrissey Central. He has been the target of online impersonators, and in 2025
took legal action against a person he claims executed a years-long campaign of harassment.
