Photo: Bruce Baker / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
John Cleese is one of those rare comedians where just watching him stand in a room is already funny — the man is six foot five and moves like a malfunctioning marionette, which is basically a superpower. Cambridge-educated and impossibly posh, he turned that into the sharpest possible tool for absurdist comedy, co-founding Monty Python and unleashing Fawlty Towers on an unsuspecting world. Basil Fawlty alone would be a career-defining legacy for anyone else, but Cleese also wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda, picking up a BAFTA for it, and somehow kept reinventing himself decade after decade. What I genuinely admire is the intellectual ferocity behind the silliness — this guy actually thinks hard about what makes things funny. Now in his eighties and still firing off opinions on social media without a filter, he's proof that true comedic greatness doesn't mellow with age, it just gets more ornery.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- John Cleese
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョン・クリーズ
- Reading
- じょん・くりーず
- Born
- October 27, 1939 (age 86)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Scorpio / Rabbit
- Origin
- Weston-super-Mare, United Kingdom
- Occupation
- actor / television actor / film actor / comedian / voice actor
2. Background
- University
- Clifton College
Awards & achievements
- 1987 Primetime Emmy Award
- 2016 Rose d'Or
- 1989 BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
- 2001 European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1987 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series
- 2016 honorary doctorate
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Frequently asked questions
When was John Cleese born?
Born October 27, 1939 (age 86).
Where is John Cleese from?
John Cleese is from Weston-super-Mare, United Kingdom.
What does John Cleese do?
John Cleese works as actor, television actor, film actor, comedian, voice actor.
Actor — see all → · Television actor — see all → · More people from United Kingdom →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.