During the 1980s and 1990s, Cleese focused on film, though he did work with Peter Cook in his one-off TV special
Peter Cook and Co. in 1980. In the same year a theatrical piece for TV was released, with Cleese playing
Petruchio, in
Shakespeare's
The Taming of the Shrew. He also rejoined the Pythons for
Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and starred in
The Secret Policeman's Ball for
Amnesty International. He married Barbara Trentham on
15 February 1981. Their daughter Camilla was born in 1984.
In 1987, during the
1987 UK General Election he recorded a nine minute party political broadcast for the
SDP-Liberal Alliance, which talks about the similarities and failures of the other two parties in a more humourous tone than the standard political broadcast. It is not known if Cleese has transferred his support from the
SDP to the
Liberal Democrats.
In 1988 he wrote and starred in
A Fish Called Wanda, as the lead, Archie Leach, along with
Jamie Lee Curtis,
Kevin Kline and Michael Palin.
Wanda became an incredible success, and Cleese was nominated for an
Academy Award for his script. Cynthia Cleese starred as Leach's daughter.
In 1990, he and Trentham
divorced. On
28 December 1992 he married
Alyce Faye Eichelberger.
Chapman was diagnosed with
throat cancer in 1989; Cleese, Michael Palin, Peter Cook and Chapman's partner
David Sherlock, witnessed Chapman's passing. Chapman's death occurred one day before the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of
Flying Circus with Jones commenting, “the worst case of party-pooping in all history.” Cleese gave a stirring
eulogy at Chapman's memorial service, in which he "became the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'".
Cleese also produced and acted in a number of successful business training films, including
Meetings, Bloody Meetings and
More Bloody Meetings about how to set up and run successful meetings. These were produced by his company
Video Arts.
With
Robin Skynner, the Group Analyst (
Group Analysis) and
family therapist, Cleese wrote two books on relationships:
Families and how to survive them, and
Life and how to survive it. The books are presented as a dialogue between Skynner and Cleese.
In 1996, Cleese
declined the British honour of Commander of the
Order of the British Empire (CBE).
In 1999, Cleese appeared in the
James Bond movie,
The World Is Not Enough as
Q's assistant, referred to by Bond as
R. In 2002, when Cleese reprised his role in
Die Another Day, the character was promoted, making Cleese the new quartermaster (Q) of
MI6. In 2004, Cleese was featured as Q in in the
video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, featuring his likeness and all new voice work by the actor.
He is currently an
Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at
Cornell University, his term having been extended until 2006. Although he makes occasional, well-received appearances on the Cornell campus, he lives in the town of
Montecito,
California. He has also been appointed a Provost's Visiting Professor through 2009.
In a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy insiders
The Comedian's Comedian, Cleese was voted second only to Peter Cook. Also in 2005, a long-standing piece of
Internet humour, "The Revocation of Independence", was wrongly attributed to Cleese.
Cleese recently lent his voice to the
BioWare video game
Jade Empire. His role was that of an "outlander" named Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, stranded in the Imperial City of the Jade Empire. His character is essentially a British
colonialist stereotype who refers to the people of the Jade Empire as savages in need of enlightenment.
He also had a cameo appearance in the computer game
Starship Titanic as "The Bomb" (credited as "Kim Bread"), designed by
Douglas Adams. When the bomb is activated it tells the player that "The ship is now armed and preparing to explode. This will be a fairly large explosion, so you'd best keep back about ". When the player tries to disarm the bomb, it says "Well, you can try that, but it won't work because
nobody likes a smartarse!"
In 2003, Cleese also appeared as Lyle Finster in long-running US sitcom
Will & Grace.
In 2004, Cleese was credited as co-writer of a
DC Comics graphic novel entitled
Superman: True Brit. Part of DC's "
Elseworlds" line of imaginary stories,
True Brit, mostly written by
Kim Howard Johnson, suggests what might have happened had
Superman's rocket ship landed in Britain, not America.
From
10 November to
9 December 2005, Cleese toured
New Zealand with his stage show 'John Cleese — His Life, Times and Current Medical Problems'. Cleese described it as "a
one man show with several people in it, which pushes the envelope of acceptable behaviour in new and disgusting ways." The show was developed in
New York with
William Goldman and includes Cleese's daughter Camilla as a writer and actor (the shows were directed by Australian
Bille Brown.) His assistant of many years,
Garry Scott-Irvine, also appeared, and was listed as a co-producer. It then played in universities in
California and
Arizona from
January 10 to
March 25 2006 under the title "Seven Ways to Skin an Ocelot" . His voice can be downloaded for directional guidance purposes as a downloadable option on some personal
GPS-navigation device models by company
TomTom.
In June 2006, while
promoting a football (soccer) song in which he was featured, entitled
Don't Mention the World Cup, Cleese appears to have claimed that he decided to retire from performing in sitcoms, instead opting to writing a book on the history of comedy and tutoring young comedians.
This was an erroneous story, the result of an interview with
The Times of London (the piece was not fact checked before printing).
In 2007, Cleese is appearing in ads for
Titleist as a golf course designer named "Ian MacCallister", who represents "Golf Designers Against Distance".
In 2007, he started filming the sequel to
The Pink Panther, titled
The Next Pink Panther with
Steve Martin and Bollywood star
Aishwarya Rai.
On
September 27,
2007,
The Podcast Network announced it had signed a deal with Cleese to produce a series of video podcasts called HEADCAST to be published on TPN's website.