 Dominant in British comedy since the '60s, tall (6'4"), eccentric Cambridge law graduate John Cleese is associated with such landmark TV series as The Frost Report (BBC, 1966) and the iconoclastic Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-70, 1972-74) on which his cohorts included Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and director Terry Gilliam. With these, he would go on to bring Monty Python to the cinema in And Now for Something Completely Different (d. Ian Macnaughton, 1971), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (d. Jones/Gilliam, 1974), Life of Brian (d. Jones, 1979), The Secret Policeman's Ball (d. Roger Graef, 1979) and ...Other Ball (d. Julien Temple, 1982), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (d. Jones, 1983), on which he wrote as well as acted. The wild inventiveness revealed in 'Python' was harnessed to different anarchic effect in the TV series, Fawlty Towers (BBC, 1975, 1979), co-written and performed with his then-wife (1968-76) Connie Booth, and perhaps the funniest ever British sitcom. He had a great success (Oscar and BAFTA-nominated script, BAFTA for acting) in 1988 with A Fish Called Wanda (d. Charles Crichton, 1988), which he failed to duplicate in the follow-up Fierce Creatures (UK/US, d. Robert Young/Fred Schepisi, 1997), played 'R' in the 1999 Bond, The World Is Not Enough (UK/US, d. Michael Apted), and was in several US films, including Silverado (d. Lawrence Kasdan, 1985) and the film version of the cult children's book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (UK/US, d. Chris Columbus, 2001). He also founded Video Arts Ltd, which produced some witty business training films. His varied contributions stamp him a polymath of British comedy in the last third of the 20th century. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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FILM & TV CREDITS
