John Cleese

John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python co-stars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983).
In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote the sitcom Fawlty Towers, and he starred in it as Basil Fawlty. The series resulted in Cleese receiving the 1980 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and in 2000 the show topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. In a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil was ranked second on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.
== External links ==
*John Cleese at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
*John Cleese at the BBC Guide to Comedy
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*Podcast to celebrate The Life of Brian (March 2008)
*Daily Llama: John Cleese Visits Lemurs at San Francisco Zoo
*John Cleese Speaking at the American School in London
*A Conversation with John Cleese at Cornell University (September 2017)
Category:Living people
Category:1939 births