Michael Palin

Born: May 5 1943
Where: Ranmoor, Sheffield, UK

It's difficult to reconcile the affable Yorkshiresman with the genial torturer Jack Lint in Brazil or bungling assassin Ken Pile in A Fish Called Wanda.

The former Monty Python star's most memorable performances have always seen him playing against type as the amiable BBC globetrotter.

While film acting is not at the top of the list of his achievements, Palin has managed to build up an impressive if sporadic career on the big screen.

The son of an engineer, Palin's first taste of acting came when he played Martha in a school production of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and fell off the stage.

He studied Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he met future Python colleague Terry Jones.

In April 1966 he married his childhood sweetheart, Helen Gibbins, and began TV comedy writing with Jones on BBC programmes such as Twice A Fortnight.

In 1967, at the age of 24, he won the Prix Jeunesse at the Munich TV Festival.

In May 1969 he joined up with Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Jones for the first series of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

He made his big screen debut with the troupe in the loose collection of skits, And Now For Something Completely Different.

In 1975's Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the group successfully attempted a feature-length comedy based on the legend of King Arthur.

Outside the confines of Python, he starred as Dennis Cooper in Terry Gilliam's enjoyably surreal Jabberwocky.

He followed this up with the feature-length TV Beatles spoof The Rutles before returning to the Python fold for their masterwork, the controversial Life of Brian.

After the satire on religious fundamentalism, he re-teamed with Gilliam for Time Bandits (which he co-wrote)and starred in his own screenplay, The Missionary.

Co-starring Maggie Smith and Trevor Howard, it was an amusing comedy based around a hapless vicar and his attempts to rescue fallen women.

Next up, again with Maggie Smith, was A Private Function, a very British comedy about a stolen pig.

Palin then confounded the critics with his cruelly show-stopping portrayal of a torturer in Gilliam's magnificent totalitarian fable Brazil.

He then appeared in John Cleese's monumentally successful A Fish Called Wanda as Ken Pile, a bumbling hitman and member of a double-crossing gang of diamond thieves.

American Friends saw Palin gaining plaudits for his role as the lovelorn Rev Francis Ashby.

By this time Palin was also making a name for himself as a circumnavigator of the globe in the TV series Around The World In Eighty Days and Pole to Pole.

His most recent big screen appearance was in the weak Cleese-scripted comedy Fierce Creatures in 1997.

A keen environmentalist, he was president of Transport 2000 and has leant his name to The Michael Palin Centre, part of The British Stammering Association.

He is also a keen supporter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.