| Born, November, 22 1940 as Terry Vance Gilliam in the rural community of Medicine Lake, Minnesota. His father was Mr. James Hall and his mother was Mrs Beatrice Gilliam (ne้ Vance). Terry has a younger brother, a detective in the LAPD, and a younger sister. His younger sister had asthma, and so they moved to California, where Terry started attending the Birmingham High School.
He was a bright student, recieving straight As, becoming president of the student body and senior prom king. He graduated in 1958 and went to major in political science at Occidental College, although he started doing Physics and then Fine Art before settling down. At college he honed his writing skills by becoming editor of the college magazine, Fang. This magazine basically became a forum about Harvey Kurtzman.
When Terry graduated, and after a short burst in the real world. Kurtzman offered him a job as an associate editor of his magazine Help!, after seeing some copies of Fang. The magazine folded in 1965, and so Terry decided to join the National Guard in order to avoid conscription. Upon leaving the National Guard, Terry toured Europe, and returned penniless. After spending some time in Los Angeles and still having no luck, he moved to London. There he landed a job working for the Sunday Times Magazine, and had several freelance jobs. Eventually he ended up broke again after a brief employment at The Londoner.
With no other option, Terry gave John Cleese a ring. He had met John at a photo shoot for Help! magazine and he was the only contact he knew that was still in the business. He ended up writing some sketches for Do Not Adjust Your Set, the main writers of which were Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Then he moved on to meet Eric Idle who got him a job on We Have Ways of Making You Laugh. Finally, Terry and his new friends got together for a new project. Monty Python's Flying Circus, where he was to basically be the animator for the show, although he had never animated in his life. (Do you think it shows?)
After Python, Terry did some T.V commercials, and title sequences and such like. Then the old team got together to film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Here he finally got to do what he really wanted to do. Direct a film.
Next up was Jabberwocky, which met with a lukewarm reception, he followed this up with his fantastic film Time Bandits. Another reunion with the Python crew saw The Meaning of Life come into being. And then Gilliam created his most critically acclaimed piece - Brazil, which was ironically marred by bureaucracy.
After that things were looking up, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen had its ups and downs, but then came The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas nailing Gilliam as being one of the Top directors of the 90s.
Source - http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/Gilliam_biog.html
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