Connie Booth

Constance "Connie" Booth (born 2 December 1940) is an American writer and actress, known for appearances on British television and particularly for her portrayal of Polly Sherman in the popular 1970s television show Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then husband John Cleese. In 1995, she quit acting and worked as a psychotherapist until her retirement. Booth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 2, 1940. Her father was a Wall Street stockbroker and her mother was an actress. The family later moved to New York State. 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. Booth secured parts in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–74) and in 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). She also appeared in How to Irritate People (1968), a pre-Monty Python film starring Cleese and other future Monty Python members; a short film titled Romance with a Double Bass (1974) which Cleese adapted from a short story by Anton Chekhov; and The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977), Cleese's Sherlock Holmes spoof, as Mrs. Hudson 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…