Alec Guinness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Star Wars films
Birth name	Alec Guinness de Cuffe
Born	April 2, 1914 London, England, United Kingdom
Died	August 5, 2000 Midhurst, England, United Kingdom
Notable roles	Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations Fagin in Oliver Twist The D'Ascoyne Family in Kind Hearts and Coronets Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai Gulley Jimson in The Horse's Mouth Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars William Dorrit in Little Dorrit
Academy Awards
Best Actor Won: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Nominated: The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) Best Supporting Actor Nominated: Star Wars (1977) Little Dorrit (1988) Best Adapted Screenplay Nominated: The Horse's Mouth (1958)

Sir Alec Guinness CH CBE (April 2, 1914 – August 5, 2000) was an Academy Award and Tony Award-winning English actor who became one of the most versatile and best-loved performers of his generation.

[edit] Life and Career

He was born in London, England, allegedly as Alec Guinness de Cuffe, although what is written on his birth certificate, which reportedly lacked a father's name, is not known. His mother's maiden name was "Agnes Cuff". She would later marry Alec's stepfather, a mentally ill soldier from the Anglo-Irish War who was suffering from what would eventually be known as post-traumatic stress disorder. It is rumoured that Guinness' birth father was a wealthy businessman whom he met once.

Guinness first worked writing copy for advertising before making his debut at the Albery Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's wildly successful production of Hamlet. During this time he worked with many actors and actresses who would become his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle, and Jack Hawkins.

Guinness continued working in Shakespeare throughout his career. In 1937 he played the role of Aumerle in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice under the direction of John Gielgud. He starred in a 1938 production of Hamlet which won him acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. He also appeared as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet (1939), Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night and Chorus in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero.

In 1939 he adapted Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations for the stage, playing the part of Herbert Pocket. The play was a success; one of its viewers was a young British film editor named David Lean, who had Guinness reprise his role in the former's 1946's film adaptation of the play.

He married the artist, playwright, and actress, Merula Salaman, a British Jew, in 1938, and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor.

Alec Guinness served in the Royal Navy throughout World War II, serving first as a seaman in 1941 and being commissioned the following year. While in the Navy, Guinness for a while planned on becoming an Anglican priest. He commanded a landing craft taking part in the invasion of Sicily and Elba and later ferried supplies to the Yugoslav partisans. During the war, he appeared in Terence Rattigan's West End Play for Bomber Command, Flare Path. He returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed through 1948, playing Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, the Fool in King Lear opposite Laurence Olivier in the title role, DeGuiche in Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Ralph Richardson in the title role, and finally starring in an Old Vic production himself as Shakespeare's Richard II. After leaving the Old Vic, he had a success as the Uninvited Guest in the Broadway production of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (1950, revived at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968), but his second attempt at the title role of Hamlet, this time under his own direction at the New Theatre (1951), proved a major theatrical disaster.

He was initially mainly associated with the Ealing comedies, and particularly for playing eight different characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Other films from this period included The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and The Man in the White Suit. In 1952, director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role, opposite Petula Clark in The Card.

Invited by his friend Tyrone Guthrie to join in the premier season of the Stratford Festival of Canada, Guinness lived for a brief time in Stratford, Ontario. On 13 July 1953, Guinness spoke the first lines of the first play produced by the festival (Shakespeare's Richard III): "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York."

In 1954, during the shooting of the film Father Brown, he and his wife converted to Roman Catholicism and became devout regular church-goers for the rest of their lives. Their son Matthew had converted some time earlier.^{[1] [2]}

Guinness was also a talented dramatic and character actor, and won particular acclaim for his work with director David Lean. After appearing in Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, he was given a starring role opposite William Holden in Bridge on the River Kwai. For his performance as Colonel Nicholson, the unyielding British POW leader, Guinness won an Academy Award for Best Actor. Despite a difficult and often hostile relationship, Lean, referring to Guinness as "my good luck charm", continued to cast Guinness in character roles in his later films: Lawrence of Arabia (as Arab leader Prince Feisal), Doctor Zhivago (as the title character's half-brother, Bolshevik leader Yevgraf), and A Passage to India as Indian mystic Godbole. (He was also offered a role in Lean's adaptation of Ryan's Daughter (1970), but declined.)

Other famous roles of this time period included The Swan (1956) with Grace Kelly in her last film role, The Horse's Mouth (1958) in which Guinness played the part of drunklen painter Gulley Jimson as well as contributing the screenplay, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Tunes of Glory (1960), Damn the Defiant! (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Scrooge (1970), and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) (which he considered his best film performance).

Guinness was oft-criticized in the '60s for his choice of film roles, and was accused of choosing parts for money rather than quality. He turned down roles in many well-received films - most notably The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - for ones that paid him better, although he won a Tony Award for his Broadway triumph as poet Dylan Thomas in Dylan. He followed this success up by playing the title role in Macbeth opposite Simone Signoret at the Royal Court Theatre in 1966, one of the most conspicuous failures of his career.

From the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances, including the part of George Smiley in the serializations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Le Carré was so impressed by Guinness's performance as Smiley that he based his characterization of Smiley in subsequent novels on Guinness. One of his last appearances was in the acclaimed BBC drama Eskimo Day.

[edit] Star Wars

His role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition by a new generation. Guinness agreed to take the part on the condition that he would not have to do publicity to promote the film. He was also one of the few cast members who believed that the film would be a boxoffice hit and negotiated a percentage deal that made him very wealthy in later life.

However, he was never happy with being identified with the part, and expressed great dismay at what he perceived to be the obsessive, out-of-touch-with-reality fan following the Star Wars trilogy attracted. Obi-Wan's death was at his request, in order to limit his subsequent role in the series, as he couldn't face saying "those bloody awful lines". However, in the DVD commentary of Star Wars: A New Hope, Lucas mentions that Guinness wasn't happy about the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed. He once said in an interview that he "shrivelled up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him. However, despite his dislike of the films, fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher (as well as director George Lucas) have always spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism on and off the set of the films (including, reportedly, helping Ford find an apartment to live in during the film's shooting in England), and did not let his evident dislike of the material show to his co-stars during filming. In fact, Lucas credited him with inspiring fellow cast and crew to work harder during filming, saying he was instrumental in helping to complete filming of the movies.

Guinness received his fifth Oscar nomination for his performance in Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit in 1989. He received an honorary Oscar in 1980 "for advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances."

Sir Alec Guinness died on August 5, 2000, at the age of 86, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex. He had been receiving hospital treatment for glaucoma, and had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was interred in Petersfield, Hampshire, England. His widow died of cancer two months later and is interred with her husband of 62 years.

[edit] Awards and Honors

He won the Academy Award as Best Actor in 1957 for his role in Bridge on the River Kwai. He was nominated again in 1958 for his screenplay adapted from Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting actor for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1977. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievements in 1980.

He was appointed CBE in 1955, and was knighted in 1959. He became a Companion of Honour in 1994 at the age of 80.

He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1559 Vine Street.

Guinness wrote three volumes of bestselling autobiography, beginning with Blessings in Disguise in 1985, followed by My Name Escapes Me in 1996, and A Positively Final Appearance in 1999. His authorized biography was written by his friend, British novelist Piers Paul Read, and published in 2003.

[edit] Filmography

• Evensong (1934)
• Great Expectations (1946)
• Oliver Twist (1948)
• Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
• A Run for Your Money (1949)
• Last Holiday (1950)
• The Mudlark (1950)
• The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
• The Man in the White Suit (1951)
• The Card (1952)
• The Square Mile (1953) (short subject) (narrator)
• Malta Story (1953)
• The Captain's Paradise (1953)
• Father Brown (1954)
• The Stratford Adventure (1954) (short subject) (narrator)
• Rowlandson's England (1955) (short subject) (narrator)
• To Paris with Love (1955)
• The Prisoner (1955)
• The Ladykillers (1955)
• The Swan (1956)
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
• All at Sea (1957)
• The Horse's Mouth (1958) (also writer)
• Our Man in Havana (1959)
• The Scapegoat (1959)
• Tunes of Glory (1960)
• A Majority of One (1962)
• HMS Defiant (1962)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
• Pasternak (1965) (short subject)
• Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious (1965)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• Hotel Paradiso (1966)
• The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
• The Comedians in Africa (1967) (short subject)
• The Comedians (1967)
• Cromwell (1970)
• Scrooge (1970)
• Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)
• Murder by Death (1976)
• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
• The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) (flashbacks) (stock footage from A New Hope)
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) (TV)
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
• Raise the Titanic (1980)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980) (TV)
• Smiley's People (1982) (TV)
• Lovesick (1983)
• Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
• A Passage to India (1984)
• Monsignor Quixote (1985) (TV)
• Little Dorrit (1988)
• A Handful of Dust (1988)
• Kafka (1991)
• A Foreign Field (1993)
• Mute Witness (1994)

[edit] Trivia

• In his autobiography Blessings In Disguise he tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars!" while in his final volume of autobiography A Postively Final Appearance he grudgingly gives an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over a hundred times, on the condition that the fan promises to stop watching the film, because as Guinness put it "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him. Guinness reportedly grew so tired of modern audiences seeming to remember him only for his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he would throw away the fan mail he received from Star Wars fans unopened.
• On June 3, 1961, Alec Guinness sent a letter to Stan Laurel, acknowledging that he had unconsciously modeled his portrayal of Sir Andrew Aguecheek as he imagined Laurel might have done. Guinness was 23 at the time he was performing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, so this would have been around 1937, by which time Laurel had become an international movie star.
• Reportedly had a premonition of James Dean's death, warning the actor that if he got into his car, he would be dead within a week. Dean died several days later.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ How Father Brown Led Sir Alec Guinness to the Church
2. ^ Sir Alec Guinness by Tom Sutcliffe, Monday August 7, 2000

[edit] External links

• Alec Guinness at the Internet Movie Database
• 1986 audio interview of Alec Guinness by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio