Connie Booth
Birthday: 1940-12-02 | Place of Birth: Indianapolis, Indiana, USAConstance "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 participate in a documentary about the series for the digital channel Gold in 2009. 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. In 1994, she played a supporting role in "The Culex Experiment", an episode of the children's science fiction TV series The Tomorrow People. 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
Known For
Acting
Role
as Self / Polly Sherman
as Herself
as The Witch
as Pat Harbinson
as Yvonne Chadwick
as Caroline Hartley
as Madge
as Nurse Javis
as Violet Morstan
as Linda
as Mrs. Gardner
as Laura Lyons
as Helen Trapp
as Ruth Baker
as Mrs. Errol
as Sylva Bassington-ffrench
as Mrs. Hudson / Francine Moriarty
as Sheila
as Various
as Ginny
as Lee-Ann Good
as Polly Sherman
as Princess Costanza
as Best Girl
as Princess Mitzi Gaynor
