John Marwood Cleese (born October 27, 1939 in Weston-super-Mare, England) is a British actor and screenwriter. His comedy career, after exposure as part of the Oxbridge Footlights, really began with the ensemble comedy show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. He is most famous for his work in Monty Python, where he often played authority figures and yelled a lot. His leaving the show before the fourth season is widely seen to be the moment when it Jumped the Shark. Beyond that, he, along with his then-wife Connie Booth, created and starred in Fawlty Towers, co-wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda, helped write the Superman Elseworld Superman: True Brit, made cameo appearances all over the place, and gave a rather famous eulogy to friend and fellow Python Graham Chapman.

He is the straightest Straight Man possible without having to resort to Asimo or attaching girders to one's back. Except when he's playing a raving lunatic. Although even then he manages to be the straightest raving lunatic you've ever encountered (see Basil Fawlty and Tim the Enchanter).

Long established career aside, younger generations likely know of him simply for portraying Nearly Headless Nick in the first two Harry Potter films.

He started his own YouTube channel in July 2016. The lemur species Avahi cleesei was named after him in 2005.

Tropes associated with him include:

• Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: In Monty Python's Flying Circus an MPFC LP played by Cleese had this as the basis for a sketch.
  Cleese: Gentlemen, our MP saw the PM this AM and the PM wants more LSD from the PIB by tomorrow AM or PM at the latest. I told the PM's PPS that AM was NBG so tomorrow PM it is for the PM nem. con.''
• The Big Guy: His height is often used as a source for his comedy. He plays authoritarian characters or is pitched against smaller comedians. One can simply quote from the Archaeology Sketch: "Because I am six-foot-five, and I eat little twerps like you for breakfast!"
• British Stuffiness: He has performed these kind of characters in many of his comedies, most notably Archie in A Fish Called Wanda.
  • The younger British comedian Stewart Lee is not the first person to observe that Cleese is acquiring some of these characteristics in real life, e.g. complaining about how London isn't an "English city" anymore.
• The Comically Serious: Basil Fawlty himself was designed with this trope in mind. John Cleese has mentioned in interviews that the guiding principle he had when designing Fawlty was that someone having something embarrassing happen to them isn't funny; someone having something embarrassing happen to them and trying to press on as though everything is normal is hilarious.
• Creator Backlash: Despite being the most famous member of Monty Python, he is the only one who grew dissatisfied with the format early, left the series after the third season because of Seasonal Rot, and to this day still thinks most of what they did could've been a whole lot better if they had more time and money to perfect some stuff. He is also the only Python who once complained to the BBC about one of their sketches he deemed too vulgar and managed to have it cut.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cleese is very well known for saying odd stuff while remaining straight-faced.
  • Freak Out: On the flip side, he does these pretty well too, such as the scene in Fawlty Towers where he loses his temper with his car and gives it "a damn good thrashing!"
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Due to his imposing height, Cleese is often cast as a military officer, a teacher, a principal, a manager or any kind of person with power. It allows him to command orders and shout at people, with hilarious results. He played these kind of characters a lot in Monty Python's Flying Circus, for instance in the "Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit" sketch.
• Embarrassing Last Name: Before he was born, his father changed his last name to Cleese from Cheese.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Both In-Universe as well as in reality. The "Undertaker" sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus has Cleese going to an undertaker with his mother's corpse in a bag and being convinced to eat her. In an episode of Fawlty Towers a hotel guest dies and needs to be smuggled out of the hotel in all discretion, which naturally goes completely wrong. When Graham Chapman died in 1989 Cleese livened up the funeral by saying at the eulogy: "Good riddance, the free loading bastard. I hope he fries!", explaining that Chapman loved a little controversy and would have been saddened if it didn't happen at his funeral.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: In his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he and Stephen indulged in this during a Big Furry Hat segment; both with hats and ham.
• I Am Very British: It may be difficult to find another British comedian who embodies all the stereotypical ideas about the Quintessential British Gentleman and Stiff Upper Lip more than Cleese. Maybe Peter Sellers could, but he's more famous as a French detective.
• Japandering: Cleese was one of many Anglosphere celebrities who did commercials for the Polish banking firm BZ-WBK. Cleese's ads revolve around him hosting a cooking show and getting into a number of comedic mishaps thanks to his apparent lack of cooking skills, up to and including getting bitten by a dead fish.
• Large and in Charge: Subverted. He tends to play imposing figures that are undermined in various ways. Death, the Black Knight and a Roman officer in the Monty Python films are all prime examples.
• Large Ham: He may not always be loud about it, but this is most definitely the case.
• Maurice Chevalier Accent: His French characters tend to be — for lack of a better word — outRAGEous! Seen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and The Swan Princess.
• Meaningful Rename: His actual last name is "Cheese", but his father changed this to avoid other pupils laughing at him as he had experienced in his own youth. It didn't help anyway, because the others still laughed at him. Interestingly enough Cleese is very fond of his actual last name and has often referred to cheese in a lot of his comedy, including the "Cheese Shop" sketch.
  • Cleese stated that since his friends in the US tend to call him "Jack", he regretted that he could not use the name "Jack Cheese", which he thought was a great name for a comedian.
• N-Word Privileges: Came under fire for calling the late Graham Chapman a “poof” on live radio in 2018. Whilst this was an undeniably poor choice of words, the two had an extremely close friendship and working relationship, so it’s doubtful that Cleese actually harbours any real homophobic prejudice.
• Only in It for the Money: Cleese has a reputation for being very intent on earning money. (His divorce settlement was very expensive and pretty much forced him to do a lot more work than most actors of his age and recognition.) Eric Idle complained a lot about this, especially because Cleese only wanted to do the post-Python projects (like the movies) if they brought in a lot of cash. Many of the films and TV sitcom appearances Cleese has done in the later years of his life have been criticized as this too. Ironically, Idle himself has gone the same route the last twenty years, such as his "Greedy Bastard Tour".
  • "Begone" Bribe: Eric Idle on John Cleese in "The Pythons Autobiography":
    He once told me, and he won't deny this, "I'll do anything for money." So I offered him a pound to shut up, and he took it.
• Playing Against Type: Gives what is probably his most quiet, dramatic performance in Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Of course, it's all relative.
  • He also has a more understated role as Sheriff Langston in Silverado, though he still gets to be a Deadpan Snarker in that one and his character has some other classic Cleese elements, namely being an intelligent and cultured man who is Surrounded by Idiots.
• Pop Cultural Osmosis: In the USA he is best remembered for his roles in Monty Python, while in UK probably more people recognize him as Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers.
• Precision F-Strike: Believes that profanity has its place, but it must be handled carefully or it loses its effect. He abhors works that use it simply for the sake of being vulgar.
  Cleese: I'd like to be the first person, at a British memorial service, to say 'fuck'.
• Production Posse: He enjoys working with Michael Palin and often goes out of his way to try and include Palin in his projects (which is why Monty Python was formed). He also enjoyed working with the cast of A Fish Called Wanda so much that he reunited them to work together on Fierce Creatures.
• Sad Clown: Like most comedians, he suffered from depression with his failed marriages. He also got tired of the Monty Python format quickly and left after three seasons. His conversations with psychiatrist Robin Skynner led to the popular books Families and How To Survive Them and Life And How To Survive It.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Although he's always had a pretty irreverent sense of humour, the older he's become the less he seems to care about whether he offends people and his opinions have been somewhat controversial ("London is no longer a British city").
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: In Monty Python's Flying Circus Cleese often portrays characters who use very out of the ordinary words in their every day speech.
• Silly Walk: Not the Ur-Example, since other comedians before him have had silly walks, but he could be the Trope Namer and Trope Codifier. A famous Monty Python sketch has him as the Minister of Silly Walks and he goosestepped another funny walk in the Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans". It's one of his trademarks, though he doesn't particularly like the fact that he is pigeonholed for "such a ordinary and simple joke."
• Stepford Smiler: Turned his eulogy of Graham Chapman into an irreverent roast (including the famous line "Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries"). However, those close to Cleese would later comment that he was deeply bereaved by Chapman's death, to the point where he needed to be escorted out of Chapman's hospital room by physicians when Chapman passed away. Cleese was also clear during the eulogy that the roast was what Graham would have wanted.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Talks a lot between his teeth while remaining straight-faced.
• Typecasting: He's pretty much the same in every movie. He often says "Jolly good", "Right!", "Marvelous", and "[sucks wind between teeth]...Still!". Since A Fish Called Wanda, he is also often cast in films and TV series as somewhat of a Chick Magnet.
• Working with the Ex: In Fawlty Towers Cleese plays Basil, while his then wife Connie Booth plays Polly the maid. In the first series they were still together. In the second they were divorced. Still, they did get along fine, seeing that she also co-wrote the scripts.
• Write What You Know:
  • He based Basil Fawlty on a very rude hotel manager called Donald Sinclair. The other Pythons left the hotel, but John chose to stay and study Donald's behavior. He would then go on to play a hotel tycoon named Donald Sinclair in Rat Race.
  • The Roman centurion from Life of Brian who corrects Brian's Gratuitous Latin rendition of "Romans go home" and then forces him to write it out a hundred times is based on his having been a Latin teacher (and going by Youtube comments, the only difference was that the teachers didn't carry swords).
• Unintelligible Accent: In a commercial for Schweppes Ginger Ale, John Cleese asks the audience who they would like the ad to be pitched: the British approach, where he's sitting in a drawing room asking the audience to politely try the product; or the American approach, where he's at a beach party and clearly dubbed over by an American actor. In the original version of the ad, the British man spoke in an incredibly thick, indecipherable accent. A later version had the British man redubbed so that he spoke more clearly, the joke being his posh and incredibly polite manner.