For A Fish Called Wanda, he received Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award nominations. In 2000, the show topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, and in a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil was ranked second on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.Ĭleese costarred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Fierce Creatures (1997), both of which he also wrote. In the mid-1970s, Cleese and first wife Connie Booth cowrote the sitcom Fawlty Towers, in which he starred as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, for which he won the 1980 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance. Along with his Python costars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983). In the late 1960s, he cofounded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. 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.
John Marwood Cleese ( / k l iː z/ KLEEZ born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer.
