Cleese soon landed a job writing jokes for BBC Radio. He later made the move to television, becoming a writer and performer on The Frost Report featuring David Frost. Other members of the writing staff included Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Based on weekly themes, each episode of the program would feature musical satire and sketch comedy.
He also starred in At Last the 1948 Show with Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman in 1967.
Cleese started working on a new television venture with Chapman, Idle, Palin, Jones and Terry Gilliam. Together they developed Monty Python's Flying Circus, an outlandish comedy series featuring off-the-wall sketches and odd animation segments. At first, the BBC and the public did not know what to make of this unusual show when it debuted in October 1969. Monty Python avoided standard punchlines in their skits, which threw off audiences at the time. At 6-feet 5-inches tall, Cleese towered over most of the cast. He often played authority figures and showed a talent for hurling insults. Cleese, with his crisp speaking style, took on a number of memorable roles, including the stuffy representative of the Ministry of Silly Walks or the consumer who buys a dead parrot. "John's performances were the linchpin of Python," Michael Palin told People.
In 1972, Cleese branched out in a new direction. He helped found Video Arts Ltd, a company that produces humorous training videos for corporations. Putting his writing and acting talents to the test, Cleese created and appeared in programs on customer service, organization and meetings among other topics. The company's videos have been used by such companies as General Motors and Saks Fifth Avenue During the show's third season, Cleese started to lose interest. The group often worked in teams to write the sketches, with Cleese frequently pairing up with Chapman. Chapman suffered from a drinking problem at the time. "I felt we were repeating ourselves. And also I was writing with the alcoholic, and no one else wanted to," he explained to Entertainment Weekly.
He left Monty Python's Flying Circus before its fourth season. Working with his wife Connie Booth, Cleese created a new television series, Fawlty Towers. The popular sitcom first aired in 1975 and featured Cleese as the high-strung Basil Fawlty who runs an inn with his wife (Prunella Scales). His real-life wife played a hotel waitress named Polly on the show. His marriage to Booth ended in 1978, but the two continued to work together on Fawlty Towers until 1979.
While he had been tired of the Monty Python television series, Cleese did participate in the group's film projects. He appeared in, and helped write, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983). The films won high praise and delighted the group's ever-growing legions of fans. They are now considered some of the best comedies ever made.
Cleese had another career breakthrough in 1988 with A Fish Called Wanda. For this comedy, he starred as an English barrister who gets mixed up with criminals (Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline) who are after some stolen jewels. Michael Palin also had a supporting role in the film, which Cleese co-wrote with Charles Crichton. The comedy raked in more than $200 million at the box office and earned Cleese and Crichton an Academy Award nomination for their script.
The following year, Cleese reunited with his fellow Python colleagues to say good-bye to one of their own. Graham Chapman died of cancer in a London hospital on October 4, 1989, with Cleese, Palin, Chapman's partner David Sherlock and some of Chapman's family by his side. That December, Cleese and several other members of Python spoke at Chapman's memorial service.
In 1997, Cleese tried to recreate the success of A Fish Called Wanda in Fierce Creatures by reuniting the cast for a new comedy. Unfortunately, the film received harsh reviews and performed poorly at the box office.
Cleese had better luck with other franchises, signing on in the James Bond film series as an assistant gadget expert in The World Is Not Enough (1999). In 2002's Die Another Day, he returned as Q, the chief gadget expert. He also appeared in the first two Harry Potter films as a ghost named Nearly Headless Nick. Cleese has also enjoyed some success on American television. He won an Emmy Award in 1987 for a guest appearance on the sitcom Cheers.
More recently, Cleese had a recurring role on the hit comedy Will & Grace from 2003 to 2004. His distinctive English accent has been put to good use on several animated projects as well. In Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Ever After (2010), Cleese voiced King Harold. In 2010, Cleese appeared in advertisements for The Automobile Association and for the Canadian insurance company Pacific Blue Cross.
In 2012, Cleese was cast in Hunting Elephants, a heist film comedy by Israeli filmmaker Reshef Levi. Cleese had to quit just prior to filming due to heart trouble and was replaced by Patrick Stewart. Between September and October 2013, Cleese embarked on his first-ever cross-Canada comedy tour. Entitled "John Cleese: Last Time to See Me Before I Die tour", he visited Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria and finished in Vancouver, performing to mostly sold-out venues.
Cleese returned to the stage in Dubai in November 2013, where he performed to a sold-out theatre. Cleese was interviewed and appears as himself in filmmaker Gracie Otto's 2013 documentary film The Last Impresario, about Cleese's longtime friend and colleague Michael White. White produced Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Cleese's pre-Python comedy production Cambridge Circus.
At a comic press conference in November 2013, Cleese and other surviving members of the Monty Python comedy group announced a reuniting performance to be held in July 2014. Cleese joined with Eric Idle in 2015 and 2016 for a tour of North America, Canada and the ANZUS nations, "John Cleese & Eric Idle: Together Again At Last ... For The Very First Time", playing small theatres and including interaction with audiences as well as sketches and reminisces.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything interview, Cleese expressed regret that he had turned down the role played by Robin Williams in The Birdcage, the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day, and the bishop played by Peter Cook in The Princess Bride.
In 2017, Cleese wrote Bang Bang!, a new adaptation of Georges Feydeau's French play Monsieur Chasse!, for the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, before making its American premiere at the Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, New York, in 2018 followed by touring the UK in spring 2020. In 2021, Cleese cancelled an appearance at the Cambridge Union Society after learning that art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon had been blacklisted by the union for impersonating Adolf Hitler. His visit to the university was intended to be part of a documentary on wokeism. Cleese said he was "blacklisting myself before someone else does".
In 2023, Cleese starred in Roman Polanski's black comedy film The Palace. In October, he starting presenting a new show on GB News, The Dinosaur Hour, which aired on Sunday evenings.
PERSONAL
Married four times, Cleese went through a bitter divorce in 2009. His third wife, American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger, won a roughly $20 million settlement from Cleese. He soon announced that he would go on tour to raise money to pay the alimony to his ex-wife. Cleese has two daughters, Cynthia and Camilla. Cynthia is from his marriage to Connie Booth, and Camilla is from his second marriage to Barbara Trentham. In August 2012, Cleese married English jewelry designer and former model Jennifer Wade in a ceremony on the Caribbean island of Mustique.
