Connie Booth

Connie Booth
Booth in 1968
Born	(1940-12-02) December 2, 1940 (age 83) Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Writer, actress, psychotherapist
Years active	1968–1995
Spouses	John Cleese ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1978)​ John Lahr ​ (m. 2000)​
Children	1
Relatives	Bert Lahr (father-in-law), Ed Solomon (former-son-in-law)

Connie Booth (born December 2, 1940

Early life

Booth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 2, 1940. Her father was a Wall Street stockbroker and her mother an actress. The family later moved to New York State.^[5][6] Booth entered acting and worked as a Broadway understudy and waitress. She met John Cleese while he was working in New York City;^[6] they married on February 20, 1968.^[7]

Acting career

Booth secured parts in episodes of

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.^[9]

Booth played various roles on British television, including Sophie in Dickens of London (1976), Mrs. Errol in a BBC adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980) and Miss March in a dramatisation of Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers (1995). She also starred in the lead role of a drama called The Story of Ruth (1981), in which she played the role of the schizophrenic daughter of an abusive father.^[8][10] In 1994, she played a supporting role in "The Culex Experiment", an episode of the children's science fiction TV series The Tomorrow People.^[11]

Booth also had a stage career, primarily in the London theatre, appearing in 10 productions from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, notably starring with John Mills in the 1983–1984 West End production of Little Lies at Wyndham's Theatre.^[12]

Psychotherapy career

Booth ended her acting career in 1995.

In 1971, Booth and Cleese had a daughter, Cynthia,[5] who appeared alongside her father in the films A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. Booth and Cleese divorced in 1978.^[2] With Cleese, Booth wrote the scripts for and co-starred in both series of Fawlty Towers, although the two were actually divorced before the second series was finished and aired. Their daughter Cynthia married screenwriter Ed Solomon in 1995.^[14][15]

Booth married John Lahr, author and former New Yorker senior drama critic, in 2000. They live in North London.^[6]

Selected filmography and theatrical appearances

Television

Film

Theatre

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Connie Booth.

• Connie Booth at the British Film Institute
• Connie Booth at
  IMDb
• BBC Comedy Guide entry