John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleeseis an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He 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 and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth27 October 1939
creativity choices design
I have several times made a poor choice by avoiding a necessary confrontation.
missing london difficult
I don't miss London much. I find it crowded, vast and difficult to get around. Cabs are incredibly expensive.
television world bad-in-the-world
English television from the Fifties to the Nineties was the least bad in the world, and now it's just as bad as it is anywhere.
crazy thinking long
I think it takes a long time, as you get older, to realize just how crazy the world is, just how ridiculous it all is.
humor ideas laughing
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.
wine people stuff
Wine is wonderful stuff. But so many people are put off by the snobbery of it.
fun ideas taste
Most of the bad taste I've been accused of has been generic bad taste; it's been making fun of an idea as opposed to a person.
teenage writing kids
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
powerful father erratic
God was treated like this powerful, erratic, rather punitive father who has to be pacified and praised. You know, flattered.
children writing thinking
I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner; it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.
sports nuts london
I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.
thinking parent different
I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'
comedian comedy tricks
By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.
blue trying scratches
It's too difficult to start right from scratch and try and be funny out of the blue.