 John Cleese was born in Weston-Super-Mare, England and educated at Clifton College and Cambridge before beginning his career as a performer and writer. Following his debut as a member of the Cambridge Footlights Revue in the West End, Cleese went on to perform in two Broadway shows: The Cambridge Revue and Half a Sixpence with Tommy Steele. He then returned to England to work for BBC Television on "The Frost Report," "At Last the 1948 Show," with Marty Feldman and "Monty Python's Flying Circus." In the 1970's, Cleese made his first Monty Python film, And Now For Something Completely Different, later taking the comedy act on a stage tour before beginning with Monty Python and The Holy Grail in 1974 and the BBC-TV series, "Fawlty Towers" in 1975 and 1979. Since then he has made two other Monty Python films, The Life of Brian in 1978 and The Meaning of Life in 1982. He also directed several Amnesty stage shows including The Secret Policeman's Ball, portrayed Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew for BBC and wrote the books Families And How To Survive Them with Dr. Robin Skynner and its sequel Life And How To Survive It. With the release of A Fish Called Wanda in 1988, Cleese won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor and received an Oscar and Writers Guild nomination in the United States, as well as an Italian Oscar, for Best Screenplay. Most recently he has completed roles in Isn't She Great, the soon to be released The World Is Not Enough, as well as George of the Jungle, Fierce Creatures, The Wind in the Willows, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 1994, he received The Jack Oakie Award for Comedy in Motion Pictures from the Screen Actors Guild in America.
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