John Cleese

Name: John Cleese
Date of Birth: October 27, 1939
Place of Birth: Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England

Biography: John Marwood Cleese is an English comedian and actor best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for co-writing the TV series Fawlty Towers in which he played Basil Fa...( read more

)wlty. He won the TV Times award for Funniest Man On TV - 1978 / 1979.

As a boy, Cleese was educated at Clifton College in Bristol, from which he was expelled for a humorous defacing of school grounds: he used painted footsteps to suggest that the school's statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet. His talent for comedy progressed with his membership of the Cambridge Footlights Revue while he was studying for a law degree at Downing College at Cambridge University. Here he met his future writing partner Graham Chapman. As Cleese's comic reputation flourished, he was soon offered a position as a writer with BBC Radio, working on, amongst others, sketches for The Dick Emery Show. The success of the Footlights Revue led to the recording of a short series of half-hour radio programmes, called I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (which was so popular that the BBC commissioned a regular series with the same title). He then joined the Cambridge Revue, Cambridge Circus, for a tour of New Zealand and Broadway, and decided to stay on in America performing on and off-Broadway, including in the musical Half a Sixpence. It was during this time he met future Python Terry Gilliam. After his return to England, he started performing as a cast member of the highly successful BBC Radio show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which ran from 1965 to 1974. His fellow cast members were Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, David Hatch and Jo Kendall.

After three seasons of the intensity of Monty Python, Cleese left the show, though he collaborated with one or more of the other Pythons for decades to come, including the Python movies released in the mid-70s to early 80s - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and The Meaning of Life (1983). Cleese and then-wife Connie Booth collaborated in the legendary television series "Fawlty Towers" (1975), as the sharp-tongued, rude, bumbling yet somehow lovable proprietor of a rundown English seaside hotel. Cleese apparently based this character on a proprietor he had met while staying with the other Pythons at a hotel in England. Only a dozen episodes were made, but each was truly hilarious, and he is still closely associated with this program to this day.

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Comments

gih3

Monty Python was the wildest, ahead of it's time series.
The whole cast was funny and I bet fun?
Light, Life, Love, Liberty!

posted 50 days ago
sportboy

This actor as acted good in Shrek 2 Shrek 3 and played good in Charlottes Web and many other films well I like him acting anyway I think hes well good.

posted 183 days ago
julie53066

if u ever read this....which i doubt u wil but who know..........i think that you are like the best actor evr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

posted 220 days ago
deathofseasonsdash

i love mother and son its sooo funni and faulty towers
i saw him at the airport in new castle australia that was the best day of my life :D

posted 308 days ago
sapphired900

Omg that dying scene in Shrek 3 was very sad ='( BUT THAT WAS SO HILARIOUS HOW HE WAS COUGHING!! Lol this guys a great actor =)

posted 311 days ago
jaileung

1 of the best ever comedians !!!awsome in all the pythons and especialy in Falty Towers THAT IS A AWSOME SERIESS
JUST PURE CLASS

posted 347 days ago
zappasgal2005

Started watching Monty Python when the BBC broadcast was brought to channel 41 in Kansas City-somewhere around 1972-78? This gut is a hoot!!!!

posted 375 days ago
MaddieSpektrum

The man knows how to deliver a line so perfectly. His physical comedy is awesome. I loved the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch when he demonstrated his walk and kept his face so completely casual.

posted 439 days ago
rubenrosseels926

every movie he's in is worth watching!!

posted 457 days ago
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posted 460 days ago