2/25/2015 John Cleese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Cleese From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film John Cleese 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 and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films, two Harry Potter films, and the last three Shrek films. Cleese in 2008 Born John Marwood Cleese With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making 27 October 1939 entertaining training films. Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England Alma mater Clifton College Contents Downing College, Cambridge Occupation Actor · voice actor · screenwriter · 1 Early life and education comedian · producer 2 Career Years active 1961–present 2.1 Pre-Python Height 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) 2.2 Monty Python Political Liberal Democrat 2.2.1 Partnership with Graham party Chapman Spouse(s) Connie Booth (m. 1968; div. 1978) 2.3 Post-Python Barbara Trentham (m. 1981; div. 1990) 2.3.1 Fawlty Towers Alyce Eichelberger (m. 1992; div. 2.4 1980s and 1990s 2008) 2.5 2000–present Jennifer Wade (m. 2012) 3 Admiration for black humour Children Cynthia (b. 1971) 4 Personal life Camilla (b. 1984) 4.1 1960s–1980s Website 4.2 1990s–present TheJohnCleese.com 5 Support of lemurs (http://www.thejohncleese.com/) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese 1/25 2/25/2015 John Cleese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 6 Political views 7 Radio credits 8 Television credits 8.1 Major roles 8.2 As host 8.3 Guest appearances 9 Filmography 10 Video game credits 11 Other credits 12 Television advertisements 13 Awards 14 Honours and tributes 15 Bibliography 15.1 Scripts 15.2 Dialogues 16 See also 17 References 18 Published works 19 External links Early life and education Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese, an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn (née Cross).[1] His family's surname was originally Cheese, but his father had thought it was embarrassing and changed it when he enlisted in the Army during World War I. As a child, Cleese supported Bristol City Football Club and Somerset County Cricket Club.[2][3] Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School, where he received a prize for English studies and did well at cricket and boxing. When he was 13, he was awarded an exhibition at Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was already more than 6 feet (1.83 m) tall by then. He allegedly defaced the school grounds, as a prank, by painting footprints to suggest that the statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet.[4] Cleese played cricket in the First XI and did well academically, passing 8 O-Levels and 3 A-Levels in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.[5][6] In his autobiography So, Anyway he says that discovering, aged 17, he had not been made a house prefect by his housemaster, Billy Williams, affected his outlook. 'It was not fair and therefore it was unworthy of my respect... I believe that this moment changed my perspective on the world.’ He could not go straight to Cambridge University as the ending of conscription in the United Kingdom meant there were twice the usual number of applicants for places, so he returned to his prep school for two years[7] to teach science, English, geography, history and Latin[8] (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in Life of Brian, in which he corrects Brian's badly written Latin graffiti[9]). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese 2/25 2/25/2015 John Cleese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia He then took up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge to read Law. He also joined the Cambridge Footlights. He recalled that he went to the Cambridge Guildhall, where each university society had a stall, and went up to the Footlights stall where he was asked if he could sing or dance. He replied "no" as he was not allowed to sing at his school because he was so bad, and if there was anything worse than his singing it was his dancing. He was then asked "Well, what do you do?", to which he replied, "I make people laugh".[7] At the Footlights theatrical club he spent a lot of time with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie and met his future writing partner Graham Chapman.[7] Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue I Thought I Saw It Move,[7][10] and was Registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962. He was also in the cast of the 1962 Footlights Revue Double Take![7][10] Cleese graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with a 2:1. Despite his successes on The Frost Report, his father would send him cuttings from The Daily Telegraph offering management jobs in places like Marks and Spencer.[11] Career Pre-Python Cleese was a scriptwriter, as well as a cast member, for the 1963 Footlights Revue A Clump of Plinths.[7][10] The revue was so successful at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that it was renamed Cambridge Circus and taken to the West End in London and then on a tour of New Zealand and Broadway, with the cast also appearing in some of the revue's sketches on The Ed Sullivan Show in October 1964.[7][12] After Cambridge Circus, Cleese briefly stayed in America, performing on and Off-Broadway. While performing in the musical Half a Sixpence,[7] Cleese met future Python Terry Gilliam, as well as American actress Connie Booth, whom he married on 20 February 1968.[7] He was soon offered work as a writer with BBC Radio, where he worked on several programmes, most notably as a sketch writer 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 were so popular that the BBC commissioned a regular series with the same title that ran from 1965 to 1974. Cleese returned to Britain and joined the cast.[7] In many episodes, he is credited as "John Otto Cleese" (according to Jem Roberts, this may have been due to the embarrassment of his actual middle name Marwood).[13] Also in 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing on The Frost Report. The writing staff chosen for The Frost Report consisted of a number of writers and performers who would go on to make names for themselves in comedy. They included co-performers from I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and future Goodies Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor, and also Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh and future Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. While working on The Frost Report, the future Pythons developed the writing styles that would make their collaboration significant. Cleese's and Chapman's sketches often involved authority figures, some of whom were performed by Cleese, while Jones and Palin were both infatuated with filmed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese 3/25 2/25/2015 John Cleese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia scenes that opened with idyllic countryside panoramas. Idle was one of those charged with writing David Frost's monologue. During this period Cleese met and befriended influential British comedian Peter Cook. It was as a performer on The Frost Report that Cleese achieved his breakthrough on British television as a comedy actor, appearing as the tall, patrician figure in the classic class sketch, contrasting comically in a line-up with the shorter, middle class Ronnie Barker and the even shorter, working class Ronnie Corbett. This series was so popular that in 1966 Cleese and Chapman were invited to work as writers and performers with Brooke-Taylor and Feldman on At Last the 1948 Show,[7] during which time the Four Yorkshiremen sketch was written by all four writers/performers (the Four Yorkshiremen sketch is now better known as a Monty Python sketch).[14] Cleese and Chapman also wrote episodes for the first series of Doctor in the House (and later Cleese wrote six episodes of Doctor at Large on his own in 1971). These series were successful, and in 1969 Cleese and Chapman were offered their very own series. However, owing to Chapman's alcoholism, Cleese found himself bearing an increasing workload in the partnership and was therefore unenthusiastic about doing a series with just the two of them. He had found working with Palin on The Frost Report an enjoyable experience and invited him to join the series. Palin had previously been working on Do Not Adjust Your Set with Idle and Jones, with Terry Gilliam creating the animations. The four of them had, on the back of the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set, been offered a series for Thames Television, which they were waiting to begin when Cleese's offer arrived.