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• John Cleese is a British actor and founding member of the Monty Python comedy group. He won an Emmy Award for best actor in a guest starring role in 1987 and was nominated for an Academy Award for best screenplay in 1988 for A Fish Called Wanda.

• Fast Facts

  1. Born: October 27, 1939
  2. Birthplace: Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England
  3. Holds a law degree from Downing College, Cambridge University (1963)
  4. Co-founded the Monty Python comedy group (1969)
  5. Founded Video Arts (1971)
  6. Stars in and produces business training videos
  7. Currently Provost's Visiting Professor at Cornell University

• Monty Python

  Cleese met his writing partner Graham Chapman at Cambridge, and the two wrote comedy together throughout the 1960s. Cleese met Michael Palin on The Frost Report, and the three teamed up with Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones for Monty Python's Flying Circus.

  Cleese wrote several of the troupes most famous sketches, and appears in the Dead Parrot, Cheese Shop and Fish License sketches.

  In 1975, he reteamed with the Python troupe to co-write Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where he plays Sir Lancelot, The Black Knight and the Taunting Frenchman.

• Fawlty Towers

  In 1975 and 1979, Cleese wrote and starred in two series of the sitcom Fawlty Towers, where he plays a disgruntled hotel manager. Several episodes of the show are considered among the greatest sitcom episodes in television history, including The Germans, The Psychiatrist and The Kipper and the Corpse.

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Monty Python | Fawlty Towers | John Cleese Twitter | Eric Idle | Graham Chapman | Terry Gilliam | Michael Palin | Terry Jones | Life of Brian | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | Monty Python's Life of Brian | And Now for Something Completely Different | Monty Python's The Meaning of Life | A Fish Called Wanda | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | Rat Race Movie | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Die Another Day | Jamie Lee Curtis | Kevin Kline | University of Cambridge | John Cleese Sarah Palin | Planet 51

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