Connie Booth's participation in the Monty Python comedy franchise is, compared to other major contributors, relatively minor. An American by birth, she began appearing on British television in the late 1960s, and came to Monty Python's Flying Circus through her marriage, in 1968, to John Cleese. After small roles on the TV series — most notably the Lumberjack's "Best Girl" — she played The Witch in one of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's most famous scenes. It wasn't until after Python, though, that she secured an extremely prominent place in British comedy history. In 1975, Booth and Cleese co-wrote Fawlty Towers, a sitcom about a small hotel in which she played the long-suffering maid and waitress, Polly. The show remains one of the greatest in British TV history, and made Booth into a legend.
Fawlty Towers ended after two seasons, and by the end of the 1970s Booth and Cleese had divorced. She continued acting , with credits including Floodtide, The Tomorrow People, and Faith, until 1995, when she effectively retired from the screen. In 2000 she began a career as a psychotherapist and lives in London with her husband, the writer John Lahr.
