Cleese, John (1939-…), is an English actor and writer internationally known for his distinctive style of physical and verbal comedy. Cleese first gained recognition as part of a gifted and zany group of young English comic actors who starred in a television review called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” The program’s unique blend of satire and broad comedy made it a cult favorite, especially through reruns after the show ceased production. Cleese also won fame as Basil Fawlty, the frenzied operator of an English resort hotel in the English TV series “Fawlty Towers” (1975-1979).
John Marwood Cleese was born on Oct. 27, 1939, in Weston-super-Mare, England, near Bristol. He received a master’s degree in law from Cambridge University but decided to go into show business. He started as a comedy writer and comedian and then began appearing on English television. He gained international popularity for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” along with Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin. Several of their sketches were re-filmed and released as the group’s first movie, And Now for Something Completely Different (1971). Cleese and his co-stars also made four Monty Python original films, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). In 2013, Cleese, Gilliam, Jones, Idle, and Palin announced that they would reunite for a live show in London in 2014. Chapman died in 1989.
Cleese’s other films include Time Bandits (1981), Clockwise (1986), A Fish Called Wanda (1988, which he also wrote), The Jungle Book (1994), Fierce Creatures (1996), and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). He provided the voice of the king in the popular Shrek series of animated motion pictures. He also narrated the animated feature Winnie the Pooh (2011). Cleese is the coauthor of the books Monty Python’s Big Red Book (1971), The Strange Case of the End of Civilization As We Know It (1977), Families and How to Survive Them (1983), and Life and How to Survive It (1989).
See also Monty Python’s Flying Circus .
