John cleese

Born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-super-Mare, a town in Somerset, John Marwood Cleese’s father changed the original family name, “Cheese”, because meaning “cheese” in English gave rise to all kinds of of jokes As a child he was already a complete hooligan, for example he surprised his schoolmates by painting on the ground some striking footprints that suggested that a statue of a military ancestor had come down from its pedestal to go to the bathroom. He studied Law at Downing College, Cambridge, where he joined the Footlights, the theater club, where he would meet someone who would have a decisive influence on his life, Graham Chapman .

In 1965, he began writing sketches with Chapman for the television series The Frost Report , an enormous success in the United Kingdom, where he met Eric Idle , Terry Jones  and  Michael Palin . With them, the duo would end up creating the famous program Monty Python’s Flying Circus , which would also be joined by the American Terry Gilliam , to which John Cleesehe had met during a brief stint trying to make a career as a Broadway actor. The best-known humorous series of all time was successful from the start. “While Gilliam was filming the closing animations for the jokes, I used to write with Jones and Palin, while Chapman would sit in the same room, saying nothing for long periods of time,” he recalled in an interview. “He suddenly explained that he had an idea that took what we were composing to another level.” One afternoon they created a gag about a dissatisfied customer who was treated horribly by the store manager. In principle, the first one went with a broken toaster, and then they changed it for a damaged car. But Chapman suggested a dead parrot as the faulty element, giving rise to the memorable “former parrot” number.

John Cleese was very good at this stage with characters with authority, so he used to give life to policemen, Nazi officers or officials, among which the one from the Ministry of Silly Steps stands out, who walks in such a grotesque way, that It is impossible not to laugh with another of the most remembered moments of the show. After the third season, the actor got tired of the problems caused by Chapman’s alcoholism, and thought that the scripts were declining in quality, so he left the space, which would still have a fourth installment. However, he remained close friends with the other Monty Pythons, so he returned in the group’s movie jump, with Knights of the Square Table (and His Crazy Followers) .

It was so successful that Monty Python later made the irreverent Life of Brian – where, among other characters, he played the guy who wonders what the Romans have done for him – and The Meaning of Life . It would be necessary to add Los héroes del tiempo , directed by Gilliam –where he gave life to Robin Hood–, and Erik, the Viking ,of jones. She also participated with them in various stage shows. They parted ways after Chapman’s death in 1989 from esophageal cancer, when John Cleese wrote a humorous speech for his funeral (full of dark humor that the deceased himself would have commended). “Monty Pythons only make sense with Chapman, so we’ll only come back if he comes back from the grave. We are negotiating with his agent,” Eric Idle stated . In 2014, the five survivors agreed to meet after thirty years to relive their best scenes, in a London theater.

Away from his peers, John Cleese continued to shine in the movies, for example in his brief appearance as Sheriff Langston, in the western Silverado . He triumphed above all as a screenwriter and protagonist of A Fish Called Wanda , where he gave life to a criminal who with his partner (a stutterer played by Palin) plans a robbery at a jewelry store, but the members of the band begin to betray each other . Almost a decade later, he reunited with his co-stars, Palin, Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis , in Ferocious Creatures , which didn’t quite live up to the original. He also played a professor in Mary Shelle’s Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh ‘s, to R, Q’s assistant, whom he later replaced, in The World Is Never Enough and Die Another Day , two James Bond films, when he played the character Pierce Brosnan . He played Nearly Headless, one of the Hogwarts ghosts, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets .

Oddly enough, John Cleese served as Rector of the University of St Andrews between 1970 and 1973. A firm supporter of British Liberal Democrats, he offered to write speeches for the American Barack Obama, whom he admired. He admits to having no interest in religion. “I am not committed to anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than what reductionist materialist people think.”

On the other hand, John Cleese laments that he has not done well with women. “I adore lemurs. They are cute and elegant. I should have married one.” Divorced from actress and writer Connie Booth , she gave birth to her first daughter, Cynthia Cleese, who appeared with her father in A Fish Called Wanda and Ferocious Creatures . Later, the interpreter was with Barbara Trentham , who gave birth to Camilla, with Alyce Faye Eichelberger, and the English jewelry designer and former model Jennifer Wade.

He is not worried about getting old, because he appreciates having gained wisdom. “When one is young he thinks that the world is a more or less sane place, with little pockets of madness, but as you get older you understand that the world is a madness with little pockets of sane people.” John Cleese thinks that his career in show business has been something of an afterthought in his life. “The important thing is human relations,” he says. “I would like to be remembered by the few people who have appreciated me in real life. And to be said of me that I have been a nice guy.” Starting in 2021, he began a world tour of a show that bears the significant title of “Last Time to See Me Before I Die (Last chance to see me before I die)”.