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I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.

John Cleese

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John Cleese
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: October 27
Actor
Autobiographer
Comedian
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Writer
Weston-super-Mare
Somerset
John Marwood Cleese
Writing
Hats
Thing
Tend
Mind
Actor
Writer
Happy
Actors
Split
Look
Splits
Looks
Odd

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When we hold a World Championship for a particular sport, we invite teams from other countries to play as well.
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Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.
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The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don't know how you got into the conversation. I think it's something to do with the fact that they've been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story.
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It's a plastic surgeon you need, not a doctor
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If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies... Do it in the 'closed' mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the 'open' mode... because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.
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It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.
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Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.
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If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
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I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.
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I was a terrible dancer. I dance like an Englishman.
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The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.
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Your Mother was A Hamster and you Father Smelled of elder berries.
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You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him enter regional distribution codes in data field 97 to facilitate regression analysis on the back end.
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years ago we would have been burned for this. Now what I am suggesting is that we've advanced.
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I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.
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I can never do better than 'Fawlty Towers,' whatever I do. Now I very much want to teach young talent some rules of the game.
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Aping urbanity, Oozing with vanity, Plump as a manatee, Faking humanity, Intellectual inanity, Journalistic calamity, Fox Noise insanity, You're a profanity, Hannity.
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I could take an umbrella and balance it on my chin or on my foot. And I just got interested in that kind of thing. And as I played games more and more and got stronger physically, I just became more coordinated.
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When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.
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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.
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