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Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me.
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
Incompetent
Bully
Naturally
Easy
Comes
Character
Basil
Reason
Uptight
Mean
Portraying
More quotes by John Cleese
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
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If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.
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When I was in school, I was beaten every 30 minutes. It never did me any harm except for some psychological mal-adjustments and blurred vision.
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Come to me. I want to plow you like a Calgary driveway at Christmas.
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By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.
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Laughter is the best creative medicine.
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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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Sense of humor is so much more subjective than anyone believes.
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I think that money spoils most things, once it becomes the primary motivating force.
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When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.
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The most creative people have this childlike facility to play.
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I was always a sports nut but I've lost interest now in whether one bunch of mercenaries in north London is going to beat another bunch of mercenaries from west London.
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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 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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I would like to do my own eulogy, and then shoot myself and then get in the coffin.
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I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. I don't know what's going on in London. Because London is no longer an English city, and that's how they got the Olympics. I mean, they said, We're the most cosmopolitan city on Earth, but it doesn't feel English.
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Don't let anyone tell you what you ought to like... Some wines that some experts think are absolutely exquisite don't appeal to me at all.
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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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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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Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.
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