Connie Booth is an American-born actress and writer. She has appeared in several British television programs and films, including her role as Polly Sherman on BBC Two’s Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then-husband, John Cleese.
Booth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 2 December 1940. Her father was a Wall Street stockbroker and her mother was an actress.
Booth entered acting and worked as a Broadway understudy and waitress. She met John Cleese while he was working in New York City; they married on February 20, 1968.
She secured parts in episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–74) and the Python films And Now for Something Completely Different (1971) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975, as a woman accused of being a witch).
Booth and Cleese co-wrote and co-starred in Fawlty Towers (1975 and 1979), in which she played waitress and chambermaid Polly. For thirty years Booth declined to talk about the show until she agreed to participate in a documentary about the series for the digital channel Gold in 2009.
She ended her acting career in 1995. After studying for five years at London University, she began a career as a psychotherapist, registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council.
In 1971, Booth and Cleese had a daughter, Cynthia, who appeared alongside her father in the films A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. Booth and Cleese divorced in 1978.
Booth married John Lahr, author and former New Yorker senior drama critic, in 2000. They live in north London.