Constance Booth (born December 2, 1944) is an American writer and actress known for appearances on British television and particularly for work with her former husband, John Cleese.
Booth's father was a Wall Street magnate and her mother an actress. They had moved from rural Indiana to New Rochelle, New York. After performing in high school productions, Booth went on to study drama in New York City, where she worked as a waitress. At the end of the 1960s she met the English actor John Cleese, whom she married.
Through Cleese, Booth secured parts in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus and in the Python film And Now for Something Completely Different. She also appeared in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as a woman accused of being a witch; in How to Irritate People, a pre-Monty Python film starring Cleese and other future Monty Python members; and in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (Cleese's Sherlock Holmes spoof, as Mrs Hudson).
Booth wrote with Cleese and co-starred as the maid Polly in Fawlty Towers (1975, 1979). She also appeared in a short film titled Romance with a Double Bass, adapted by Cleese from a short story by Anton Chekhov. In it, she and Cleese displayed full frontal nudity.
Booth and Cleese married on February 20, 1968. They divorced in 1978. In 1971 Booth gave birth to a daughter, Cynthia, who appeared alongside her father in both A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures Booth played various roles on British television, including Mrs Errol in a BBC adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Miss March in a dramatisation of Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers.
She appeared in a few films including 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) as the Lady from Delaware, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Booth ended her acting career in 1995. She refuses to discuss Fawlty Towers and stays out of the limelight. She works as a psychotherapist in London, a registrant of the BPC.
Booth is married to John Lahr, son of Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. She and her family live in London.
