Trivia: While attending Cambridge University, Leicester-born Graham Chapman met and befriended fellow student John Cleese. Sharing a keen sense of the ridiculous, Chapman and Cleese formed a writing/performing team, contributing scripts to a variety of BBC radio and TV shows, most notably Doctor in the House. They also wrote for such satirical films as The Magic Christian (1969) and Rentadick (1972). In 1969, Chapman and Cleese formed the Monty Python comedy troupe, which led to the matchless TV comedy-sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974). Because he came closest to resembling a film star, the Pythons cast Chapman in the leading roles of their film projects Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and The Life of Brian (1978); in the latter film, Chapman scored as an "alternate Messiah" who ended his life on the Cross while singing an insipid cheer-up song. On his own, Graham Chapman was not quite as successful as he'd been in the company of fellow Pythons Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilian, though he did publish a moderately successful 1981 memoir, A Liar's Autobiography. After co-scripting and co-starring in the all-star "comedy salad" Yellowbeard (1983), Graham Chapman died of spinal and throat cancer; he was only 48.

Trivia: An instigator of some of the more groundbreaking developments in twentieth-century comedy, John Cleese is one of Britain's best-known actors, writers, and comedians. Famous primarily for his comic efforts, such as the television series Fawlty Towers and the exploits of the Monty Python troupe, he has also become a well-respected actor in his own right.Born John Marwood Cleese (after his family changed their surname from "Cheese") on October 27, 1939, Cleese grew up in the middle-class seaside resort town of Weston-Super-Mare. He enrolled at Cambridge University with the intention of studying law, but soon discovered that his comic leanings held greater sway than his interest in the law. He joined the celebrated Cambridge Footlights Society--he was initially rejected because he could neither sing nor dance, but was accepted after collaborating with a friend on some comedy sketches--where he gained a reputation as a team player and met future writing partner and Python Graham Chapman.Cleese entered professional comedy with a writing stint on David Frost's The Frost Report in 1966. While working for that BBC show, he and Chapman (who was also writing for the show) met fellow Frost Report writers Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Continuing his writing collaboration with Chapman (with whom he wrote the 1969 Ringo Starr/Peter Sellers vehicle The Magic Christian), Cleese soon was working on what would become Monty Python's Flying Circus with Chapman, Idle, Jones, Palin, and Terry Gilliam. The show, which first aired in 1969, was an iconoclastic look at British society: its genius lay in its seemingly random, bizarre take on the mundane facets of everyday life, from Spam to pet shops to the simple act of walking. Cleese stayed with Monty Python for three series; after he left, he reunited with his fellow Pythons for three movies. The first, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974), was a revisionist take on the Arthurian legend that featured Cleese as (among other things) the Black Knight, who refuses to end his duel with King Arthur even after losing his arms and legs. Life of Brian followed in 1979; a look at one of history's lesser-known messiahs, it featured lepers, space aliens, and condemned martyrs singing a rousing version of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" while hanging from their crucifixes. The Pythons' third outing, the 1983 Monty Python's the Meaning of Life, was a series of increasingly outrageous vignettes, including one about the explosion of a stupendously obese man and another featuring a dinner party with Death.In addition to his work with the Pythons, Cleese, along with first wife Connie Booth, created the popular television series Fawlty Towers in 1975. It ran for a number of years, during which time Cleese also continued to make movies. Throughout the 1980s, he showed up in films ranging from The Great Muppet Caper (1981) to Privates on Parade (1982) to Silverado (1985), which cast him as an Old West villain. In 1988, Cleese struck gold with A Fish Called Wanda, which he wrote, produced, and starred in. An intoxicating farce, the film won both commercial and critical success, earning Cleese a British Academy Award and an Oscar nomination for his screenplay, and an Oscar for co-star Kevin Kline. Cleese continued to work steadily through the 1990s, appearing in Splitting Heirs (1993) with Idle, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), The Wind in the Willows (1997) and George of the Jungle (1997). Fierce Creatures, his 1997 sequel to A Fish Called Wanda, proved a disappointment, but Cleese maintained his visibility, reuniting with the surviving Pythons on occasion and starring in The Out-of-Towners and The World is Not Enough, the nineteenth Bond outing, in 1999.As the new century got underway, Cleese wrote and hosted a documentary series about the human face, and he took a small but recurring role in the Harry Potter film series. In 2002 he appeared in the infamous Eddie Murphy turkey The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and showed up in another Bond film. In 2007 he was cast to voice the role of Fiona's father in Shrek 2, leading to a series of appearances for him in other animated films such as Igor, Planet 51, and Winnie the Pooh. He also appeared opposite Steve Martin in 2009's The Pink Panther 2.

Trivia: The "matinee idol" of the motley Monty Python crew, Eric Idle attended Cambridge University, where he served as president of the Footlights Revue. Idle's fellow college troupers included future Pythonites John Cleese and Graham Chapman. After getting his start on such TV series as Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report, Idle served as performer and co-writer for the zany weekly series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He remained a loyal Python throughout the group's many film, TV-special and book projects. On his own, Idle has co-starred in such films as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), Nuns on the Run (1990), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), and Casper (1995). One of his best screen showings was his sidesplitting bit as an accident-prone cyclist in National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). Among Idle's contributions to American television was his star turn as snobbish ghost Grant Pritchard in the 1989 comedy/fantasy series Nearly Departed. He starred in the 1990 farce Nuns on the Run, and three years later wrote and starred in the comedy Splitting Heirs. He continued to appear in various projects, often lending his voice to animated works like Quest for Camelot, The Secret of NIMH II, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. He directed a second Rutles movie in 2003, and that same year appeared in the documentary about the tribute concert performed after George Harrison's death. He narrated Ella Enchanted in 2004, but the next year he would have one of the biggest successes of his career when he masterminded Spamalot, a smash-hit Broadway musical that reworked Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He appeared in the documentary The Aristocrats, and voiced Merlin in Shrek the Third. In 2011 he was one of the many pepole who discussed his relationship with George Harrison in Martin Scorsese's documentary about the former Beatle.

Trivia: Unlike many of his fellow Monty Python-ites, who were educated at Cambridge, actor/writer/director Terry Jones attended Cambridge's arch-rival Oxford, where he worked with the Experimental Theatre Club. Upon his graduation, Jones was hired as a BBC staff writer. From 1969 to 1972, he was one of the comedy conspirators on the internationally popular Monty Python's Flying Circus, remaining with the Python crowd through several theatrical films, serving as director on Monty Python's the Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983). On his own, he wrote and performed in the TV series Secrets, Ripping Yarns and So This is Progress. Terry Jones' non-Python film directorial efforts include Personal Services (1987) and Erik the Viking (1989, based on his own 1984 novel); he also wrote the screenplay for Labyrinth (1986) and adapted his stage play Consuming Passions for the screen in 1988.

Trivia: Met John Cleese while he was working in New York City. Co-wrote Fawlty Towers with her husband at the time John Cleese. Has appeared in numerous Monty Python productions including Flying Circus, Holy Grail and And Now For Something Completely Different. Ended her acting career in 1995 and studied Psychology at London University - is now a qualified psychotherapist.

Trivia: For most of Terry Gilliam's early career, fans of the popular comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus assumed that he was British, since Python's other five members were natives of Britain. But the innovative animator and future director, who spent more time behind the scenes than in front of the camera, was actually the troupe's only American member. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 22, 1940, Gilliam was briefly employed as an assistant editor for Help! magazine (a job that introduced him to English comedian John Cleese, who was in NYC posing for a comic photo-strip in the magazine); he then emigrated to England in 1967. Soon after gilliam arrived in the U.K., he began working on Do Not Adjust Your Set, a popular children's TV show, developing his eccentric animated cartoons, which put into motion a hodgepodge of images, including photographs, cutouts from magazines, and famous works of art. Gilliam's contributions to the show were geared more toward adults, as his surrealistic stream-of-consciousness segments, drenched in black humor, were beyond the grasp of most children.In 1969, Gilliam was asked by Cleese and others to join the absurdist comedy troupe Monty Python. In addition to writing for Monty Python's Flying Circus, Gilliam also contributed his animated interludes, for which he was pretty much left to his own devices; the other Pythons just told him how much time he needed to fill and never gave him any narrative direction. Gilliam began offering his iconoclastic vision to moviegoers with the comedy troupe's first original film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), which he co-directed with fellow Python Terry Jones. An instant cult classic, the movie contained all the requisite Python elements: absurdist humor, self-referential parody, and extremely quotable dialogue. The following year, Gilliam had his first outing as a solo director with Jabberwocky (1976). Based on the poem by Lewis Carroll, the film featured a medieval setting similar to that of Holy Grail and starred Pythonite Michael Palin. Along with Python's brand of irreverent humor, the film featured glimmers of the visual resplendence that would become the director's trademark. But critics found it awkward and repetitive, and audiences largely stayed away. Following Jabberwocky's relative failure, Gilliam regrouped with his fellow Pythonites, co-creating The Life of Brian, the tale of a man with the misfortune of being confused with Jesus Christ. He left the directing duties to Terry Jones, focusing on animation, screenwriting, and acting. Gilliam returned to directing with Time Bandits (1979), a surreal journey through history led by a small boy and several dwarves. Bearing many similarities to Jabberwocky, Time Bandits relied less on repetition and moved the audience more briskly from one scene to the next. It did well at the box office and put Gilliam in the ranks of directors to watch.After co-directing with Terry Jones the third and final Python film, Monty Python's the Meaning of Life (1983), Gilliam made what many people consider his masterpiece, the dystopian satire Brazil (1985). Instead of journeying back to the Middle Ages, Gilliam boldly predicted a retro-1930s future of anonymous office drones commanded by an all-powerful computer. Blindingly imaginative, the film starred Jonathan Pryce as Sam Lowery, who attempts to escape the stifling bureaucratic system by fantasizing about being a superhero, and later by actually battling the powers-that-be in his own cowardly fashion. Consistently blurring the line between fantasy and reality and uncompromising in its surreal eccentricity, Gilliam's masterwork has been called Orwellian, Kafkaesque, and Luddite. A failure at the box office, Brazil has made up for that disappointment with its cult status. In addition to critical praise and a Los Angeles Film Critics award for Best Film, Gilliam received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.It was four years before Gilliam stepped behind the camera again, for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989). Returning to historical fantasy, Gilliam tells the unlikely tales of the title character as though they really happened. The Baron explores the inside of a volcano, takes a hot air balloon to the moon, gets swallowed by a whale, and quells a war that he himself started. Munchausen's stories were less well known to most Americans than to audiences in Britain, where the film won British Academy Awards for Best Production Design, Best Makeup, and Best Costume Design.Gilliam followed Munchausen with his most accessible work to date, 1991's The Fisher King. Foregoing much of his usual ornate visual style, the director focused on characters rather than flashy spectacle; the relationships among a depressed former DJ (Jeff Bridges), his enabling girlfriend (Mercedes Ruehl, in an Oscar-winning performance), and a homeless man (Robin Williams) who saves him from suicide are intertwined in a riveting, funny, and ultimately heart-warming way. Gilliam balances humor, pathos, and story-telling, while avoiding mawkishness. He received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, and the movie won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.Gilliam returned to the director's chair in 1995, achieving his biggest box office hit with the science fiction epic 12 Monkeys. Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt (in an Oscar-nominated performance), the movie tells the story of a prisoner from the future sent back in time to save the world from a catastrophic virus. But the scientists of 2035 haven't quite mastered the art of time travel, and they accidentally send Bruce Willis' character back to 1990 instead of 1996. The film was a critical and commercial success despite its hard-to-follow plot, allowing Gilliam the freedom to take even more creative risks. His next project, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel, was the ultimate "trip" movie. Detailing Thompson's drug-addled journey to the gambling capital of the world, it starred Johnny Depp as the author's alter ego, Raoul Duke. The movie was the perfect vehicle for Gilliam to create an alternate universe fueled by the mind-bending substances in which the lead characters freely and plentifully indulge. With melting faces, a lounge full of human-sized lizards, bats flying in the desert, and a demon with breasts on its back, the movie didn't need and didn't really have a plot. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the definition of a love-it-or-hate-it movie.In 2000, the director began working on Good Omens, a comedy/fantasy based on the book Good Omens: or, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, a humorous story about the apocalypse. That endeavor fell by the wayside, however, when Gilliam attempted to film his lifelong dream project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, in late 2000. From injured actors to faulty props to inclement weather conditions, the $30 million shoot became a textbook example of Murphy's Law, and was shut down despite pleas from the haggard director. In 2003, however, the project found new, unexpected life in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's documentary Lost in La Mancha, a comic tale of cinematic defeat. Intended as a "making-of" featurette to be included on the finished film's DVD, the documentary chronicled the morose fate of Gilliam's botched production in all of its painful, hilariously unbelievable glory, and became a minor art-house attraction. Gilliam subsequently fought to buy back the rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in light of all the renewed interest, but it remained to be seen whether the director would get a chance to finish what he started. Gilliam realized his dream of adapting Don Quixote for the screen in 2002 with the release of the long-awaited Lost in La Mancha, and worked with Natalie Portman and Heath Ledger in 2009's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

Trivia: British actor/satirist Michael Palin first demonstrated his writing and performing skills at Oxford University's Experimental Theatre Club. Almost immediately upon graduation, Palin was snatched up by the BBC, which made excellent use of his scathing wit and thespic versatility in such series as Twice a Fortnight and The Complete and Utter History of Britain. A relative latecomer to the fabled Monty Python troupe, Palin made up for lost time, writing and performing in the group's long-running TV series and in such big-screen projects as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1978); he also wrote much of the musical score for Monty Python's the Meaning of Life (1983). To date, Palin and Cleese have been the two ex-Pythonites most active as solo performers. Palin was hilarious as the green-as-grass Reverend Charles Fort, ministering to "fallen women" ("Women who've tripped?") in The Missionary (1982) and as stuttering doofus Ken in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), winning a British Film Association award for the latter performance. Palin remained active in television into the 1990s with cheeky projects like Ripping Yarns (1976), Do Not Adjust Your Set (1977-79) and Palin's Column (1994). An inveterate globetrotter, Michael Palin channelled his wanderlust into several tongue-in-cheek TV miniseries, beginning with Around the World in 80 Days (1989). Palin mostly retired from acting after appearing in the Fish Called Wanda "sequel" Fierce Creatures in 1997, and has mainly focused on his travel documentaries in recent years.

Trivia: Born Gloria Grahame Hallward, American actress Gloria Grahame began performing onstage with the Pasadena Community Playhouse at age nine. She later acted in Hollywood High School plays and in stock. In 1943 Grahame debuted on Broadway (billed "Gloria Hallward)", and the following year, MGM signed her to a film contract. However, not until the early '50s did she come into her own as a sexy leading lady, often playing fallen women or cheating wives. For her portrayal of a somewhat classy tart in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Grahame won a "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar. Until the mid-'50s she landed a number of excellent roles, but her career gradually diminished and she retired from the screen in the late '50s. Years later she returned to play character roles, mostly in low-budget films. She married and divorced actor Stanley Clements, director Nicholas Ray, and writer Cy Howard; later she raised eyebrows by marrying Nicholas Ray's son (her former step-son), actor-producer Tony Ray. Gloria Grahame spent her last days working on the stage in England while battling cancer.

Trivia: International filmgoers first became aware of golden-haired British child actress Patsy Kensit when she appeared as Patsy Buchannan, the daughter of Daisy and Tom Buchanan (Mia Farrow and Bruce Dern), in the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. Two years later she was sharing the spotlight with such veterans as Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner in the U.S./Russian co-production The Blue Bird (1976). Having learned her craft in TV commercials, the 17-year-old Kensit was up to the task of stepping into the difficult leading role of "Crepe Suzette" in Absolute Beginners (1986). As a bonus, Absolute Beginners allowed Kensit to perform a song that she composed herself, "Having It All," which briefly hit the charts in England. Always a favorite of critics, Kensit tried to become a major box office attraction by appearing as Mel Gibson's leading lady in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), but the role simply wasn't up to her talents. She fared far better with her riveting performance (considered her best by many observers) in the little-seen Twenty-One (1991). Patsy Kensit's output in the 1990s has included Blame it on the Bellboy (1991), The Turn of the Screw (1993) and Bitter Harvest (1995), as well as a 1991 TV adaptation of Adam Bede.

Trivia: With the blare of a brass band in the background, a big, crushing foot, and a decidedly rude raspberry, five talented comedians and one Yankee animator took Great Britain by storm in 1969. No sooner than Monty Python's Flying Circus arrived on the BBC airwaves than it was taking broad, often hysterically funny potshots at all that British tradition held dear. Even the Queen herself was not spared from their wicked satirical ways. The five core performers, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, were young but talented comedy writers and performers. The five met while working on David Frost's The Frost Report as writers and performers. After the show's demise, Cleese and Chapman continued writing together and helped produce scripts for The Magic Christian (1969). Cleese also played a major role in the film while Chapman made a cameo appearance. Cleese and Gilliam met while the latter was working on a photo spread for Help! magazine. It was television producer/writer Barry Took who helped the group launch the first episodes of their innovative sketch comedy show in the spring of 1969. The five wrote and performed all the sketches. Gilliam was responsible for the show's distinctive segues in which Gilliam employed cut-outs and placed them upon fanciful air-brushed backgrounds to create an almost grotesque form of simple animation. Initially the show was unofficially known as Baron Von Took's Flying Circus, but when the BBC decided to pick up the show as a regular series, they decided the show needed a catchier name. Several zany titles resulted until John Cleese came up with the last name Python and Eric Idle remembered a character he had met in a pub years before. The stranger had been a dapper sort and every time he came into the pub he would ask the patrons, "Has Monty been in yet?" Idle's compatriots liked the name and so the troupe and the show became Monty Python's Flying Circus. The show ran for three years and developed an enduring cult following. In addition to their television show, the troupe has traveled the world on live concert tours, recorded comedy albums, produced humor books, and has made several feature films, most notably their second and third features, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and The Life of Brian (1979). The team split up for good after their last movie, Monty Python and the Meaning of Life (1983). Though each has gone on to different projects, they occasionally show up in each other's work. Palin and Cleese in particular have worked on projects together, notably A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Fierce Creatures (1994). Graham Chapman died of cancer in 1989 at the age of 48.