John Cleese

He is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and as a scriptwriter on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of 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, Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.

In the mid 1970s, Cleese co-wrote and starred in, with first wife Connie Booth, 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 three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded the production company Video Arts, responsible for making entertaining training films.

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the only child of Muriel (née Cross), an acrobat, and Reginald Francis Cleese (b. 1894), who worked in insurance sales. His family's surname was previously "Cheese", but his father changed it to "Cleese" in 1915, upon joining the Army.

Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School where he was a star pupil, receiving a prize for English studies and doing well at sport including cricket and boxing. At 13 he received an exhibition to Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was tall as a child and was well over 6 ft when he arrived there. While at the school he is said to have defaced the school grounds for a prank by painting footsteps to suggest that the school's statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet. Cleese played cricket for the first team and after initial indifference he did well academically, passing 8 O levels and 3 A-Levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

After leaving school he went back to his prep school to teach science before taking up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge where he studied law and joined the Cambridge Footlights Revue. There he met his future writing partner Graham Chapman. Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue I Thought I Saw It Move, and was Registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962, as well as being one of the cast members for the 1962 Footlights Revue Double Take! He graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with a 2:1 classification in his degree. 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.

Personal life:

1960s to 1980s -

Cleese met Connie Booth in America during the late 1960s and the couple married in 1968. In 1971, Booth gave birth to Cynthia Cleese, their only child. With Booth, Cleese wrote the scripts for and co-starred in both series of the TV series Fawlty Towers, even though the two were actually divorced before the second series was finished and aired. Cleese and Booth are said to have remained close friends since.

Cleese remarried in 1981, to American actress Barbara Trentham. Their daughter Camilla, Cleese's second child, was born in 1984. He and Trentham divorced in 1990. It was also during this time that Cleese moved from the United Kingdom to California.

1990s to present -

On 28 December 1992, he married American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger. In January 2008, the couple announced they had split. The divorce was settled in December 2008. The divorce settlement left Eichelberger with £12 million in finance and assets; by the time she has received an agreed £600,000 a year for seven years, she will be the richer of the two. Cleese stated that "What I find so unfair is that if we both died today, her children would get much more than mine".

He had begun to date American comedienne Barbie Orr in November 2008 but they split up in January 2009.

In April 2010, Cleese revealed on The Graham Norton Show on BBC One that he had started a new relationship with a woman 31 years his junior, Jennifer Wade.

He is a vegetarian.

During the disruption caused by the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_E...) Cleese became stranded in Oslo and decided to take a taxi to Brussels. The 1500 km journey cost £3,300 and was completed with the help of three drivers who took shifts in driving Cleese to his destination where he planned to take a Eurostar to the UK.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese

Monthy Python Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000092/

IBDB: http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=79115