John Cleese Biography Quotes 27 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
John Marwood Cleese was born on 27 October 1939 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese, an insurance salesman whose family name had been changed from Cheese to Cleese during the First World War. Tall, bookish, and quick-witted, he attended local schools and then Clifton College in Bristol, where his height and dry humor began to distinguish him. After a brief stint teaching at his old prep school, he read law at Downing College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he discovered the Footlights, the student revue club that became his true education. Performing and writing with contemporaries such as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, and others, Cleese helped mount the 1963 revue A Clump of Plinths, retitled Cambridge Circus, which moved to London's West End, toured New Zealand and the United States, and reached Broadway and The Ed Sullivan Show. The success steered him decisively toward comedy rather than the bar.

Early Television and Writing
Work in London and New York brought him into the orbit of influential television producers, most notably David Frost. Cleese wrote and performed on The Frost Report alongside the "Two Ronnies", Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, and collaborated with Marty Feldman. He simultaneously developed a partnership with fellow Cambridge writer-performer Graham Chapman; the pair created and starred in At Last the 1948 Show with Brooke-Taylor and Feldman, yielding sketches that foreshadowed the surrealism to come. Meanwhile, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin were making Do Not Adjust Your Set, with animations by the American illustrator Terry Gilliam. The strands converged in 1969.

Monty Python
In 1969, Cleese, Chapman, Idle, Jones, Palin, and Gilliam formed Monty Python, launching Monty Python's Flying Circus on the BBC. Cleese's angular presence, towering frame, and ferocious precision gave the troupe a distinctive edge, whether as an officious civil servant, argumentative customer, or exasperated authority figure. He stepped away from the final television series in 1974 but remained central to the troupe's films: And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983). Life of Brian was famously financed by George Harrison, whose support kept the project alive when others balked. The Pythons' blend of absurdism and intellectual mischief permanently altered British and international comedy. The death of Graham Chapman in 1989 marked the end of an era, though the surviving members, Cleese, Idle, Jones, Palin, and Gilliam, reunited for Monty Python Live (Mostly) at London's O2 Arena in 2014; the event also celebrated Terry Jones, who would later be mourned by his colleagues and audiences alike.

Fawlty Towers
During the mid-1970s, Cleese and his then wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote Fawlty Towers, drawing inspiration from an encounter with an eccentric Torquay hotelier during the Python years. Cleese's Basil Fawlty, snobbish, desperate to impress, and catastrophically ill-tempered, became one of television's indelible creations. Broadcast in two six-episode series in 1975 and 1979, with Booth as the perceptive Polly, and co-stars Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, the show exemplified Cleese's obsession with structure: tightly plotted farces that built to explosive climaxes. Fawlty Towers has repeatedly topped polls as the greatest British sitcom and demonstrated Cleese's mastery of character-driven chaos.

Film Career and International Work
Beyond Python and Basil, Cleese made a wide-ranging film career. He played Sheriff Langston in the Western Silverado (1985) and reunited with Michael Palin, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kevin Kline for A Fish Called Wanda (1988), which Cleese co-wrote with director Charles Crichton. The film's blend of farce and heist caper brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, while Kline won the Oscar for Supporting Actor. The quartet returned in Fierce Creatures (1997). Cleese appeared in Time Bandits (1981) for Terry Gilliam, popped up in The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and took on Shakespeare as Petruchio in a BBC television production of The Taming of the Shrew (1980). He joined the James Bond franchise as Q's apprentice "R" in The World Is Not Enough (1999), succeeding Desmond Llewelyn as Q in Die Another Day (2002) opposite Pierce Brosnan.

Voice Roles and Popular Franchises
Cleese's unmistakable voice found a home in family films and animation. He voiced the cultured Ape in George of the Jungle (1997) and King Harold in Shrek 2 (2004) and Shrek the Third (2007). He portrayed Nearly Headless Nick in the first two Harry Potter films (2001 and 2002), adding ghostly whimsy to a global phenomenon. These parts introduced him to new generations while capitalizing on his flair for crisp, deadpan delivery.

Writing, Business Ventures, and Stage
Alongside performance, Cleese built a parallel career in corporate education. In 1972 he co-founded Video Arts with writer and producer Antony Jay, creating training films, such as Meetings, Bloody Meetings, that married practical instruction to comedy, and became staples in workplaces for decades. He also co-authored two popular psychology books with psychiatrist Robin Skynner, Families and How to Survive Them (1983) and Life and How to Survive It (1993), reflecting a long-standing interest in therapy, relationships, and the mechanics of human behavior. As a raconteur, he developed stage talks and lecture tours reflecting on creativity and failure, often with Michael Palin or other colleagues joining for special events. His memoir, So, Anyway..., published in 2014, charted his path from Somerset to international fame.

Personal Life
Cleese's personal life often intersected with his work. He married Connie Booth in 1968; they wrote Fawlty Towers together and had a daughter, Cynthia. After their divorce, he married the American model and actress Barbara Trentham in 1981; they had a daughter, Camilla. A third marriage, to psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 1992, ended in 2008; the subsequent financial settlement spurred a widely publicized "Alimony Tour", during which he turned personal upheaval into comic material. In 2012 he married Jennifer Wade, a jewelry designer. Friends and collaborators, including Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, and the late Terry Jones, have remained defining presences in his life, bound by decades of shared work and affectionate rivalry.

Style, Influence, and Legacy
Cleese's comedy fuses verbal precision with physical bravura: elongated, angular movement set against razor-sharp diction and an affinity for escalating farce. Influenced by earlier innovators like The Goons and the satirical movement of the 1960s, he helped modernize sketch comedy by removing punchlines, embracing meta-theatricality, and marrying highbrow ideas to low comedy. Through Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and later films, he shaped the sensibilities of performers across Britain and the United States. Collaborators such as Graham Chapman and Connie Booth were essential to his finest work, while partners like Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin helped carry his humor to global audiences. Decades into his career, Cleese remains an emblem of British wit: exacting about craft, unapologetically skeptical of fashion and cant, and permanently associated with a small hotel in Torquay, a Ministry devoted to silly walks, and a parrot that was, unmistakably, no more.

Our collection contains 27 quotes who is written by John, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Funny - Writing - Learning.

Other people realated to John: Spike Milligan (Comedian), Malcolm Muggeridge (Journalist)