Barbara Trentham

8.27.1944 - Barbara Trentham, actress, model and ex-wife of Monty Python’s John Cleese, was born in Brooklyn, and was raised in Weston, CT. In high school, she began modeling for magazines, including Seventeen, and later appeared on the cover of Vogue.

Trentham appeared in such films as The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972) starring Shirley MacLaine, Rollerball (1975) toplined by James Caan and Sky Riders (1976) with James Coburn and Robert Culp. She had bit parts in the 1970s series Star Maidens and A Man Called Sloane and later served as a reporter-producer for ABC’s Those Amazing Animals.

She dated actors Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and met Cleese in 1980 when the Monty Python comedy troupe performed at the Hollywood Bowl. They were married five months later and divorced in 1990. During her marriage to Cleese her love for art was reawakened and she began a third career as a painter, her preferred medium being oil paint. In 1993 she moved to Chicago, where she met the lawyer George Covington. The two married in 1998 and lived in Lake Bluff, Illinois. She built up an art studio which became the meeting place and source of inspiration for local artists. She was also co-founder of a local organization for artists. She was a member of the Art Association of Jackson Hole, and organized events and art fairs there.

She, died 8.2.2013 of complications from leukemia at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago

Selected filmography

1972: The Possession of Joel Delaney

1975: Rollerball

1976: Sky Riders

1976: The Girl from Outer Space (Star Maidens) (TV series )

1978: Wolf Moon (Death Moon) (TV Movie)

1979: A Man Called Sloane (TV series) (final television appearance)