John Cleese is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python co-stars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, he starred in Monty Python films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
In the mid-1970s, he co-wrote the sitcom Fawlty Towers, and he starred in it as Basil Fawlty. The series resulted in him receiving the 1980 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and in 2000 the show topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.
Other film credits include A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, both of which he also wrote. He has also starred in Time Bandits, Rat Race, Silverado, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, two James Bond films (as R and Q), two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.
He has specialised in satire, black comedy, sketch comedy and surreal humour.
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