- Born
- Died
- Birth nameAlec Guinness de Cuffe
- Height5′ 9¼″ (1.76 m)
- Alec Guinness was an English actor of stage and screen, his career spanning over sixty years. His best known screen works are his starring roles in several of the Ealing comedies between 1949 and 1957 (most notably as eight members of the same family in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), his Oscar-nominated turn as bank clerk turned bullion robber in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), an inventor who never gives up in The Man in the White Suit (1951), and as one of five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery in The Ladykillers (1955)); his six collaborations over 38 years with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984); his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); and his starring role as George Smiley in the television adaptations of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982).
His gallery of notable characters (both fictional and historical) also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark (1950), an enterprising rogue in The Promoter (1952), a sleuthing priest in The Detective (1954), an eccentric London artist in The Horse's Mouth (1958) (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter), a wayward Scottish army officer in Tunes of Glory (1960), the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), King Charles I in Cromwell (1970), the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), a blind butler in Murder by Death (1976), a survivor of the Titanic disaster in Raise the Titanic (1980), and a return to Dickens' territory (and a final Oscar nomination) as William Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1987).
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges/Chrissy JJ
- SpouseMerula Salaman(June 20, 1938 - August 5, 2000) (his death, 1 child)
- Children
- ParentsAndrew GeddesAgnes Cuff
- RelativesSally Guinness(Grandchild)Mary Ann Benfield(Grandparent)Edward Cuff(Grandparent)Natasha Guinness-Taylor(Great Grandchild)Otis Guinness-Walker(Great Grandchild)Chloe Salaman(Niece or Nephew)Toby Salaman(Niece or Nephew)Joseph Blatchley(Niece or Nephew)
- Known for playing multiple complex characters and changing his appearance to suit.
- Often played noble and fiercely proud leaders and authority figures
- Often worked with David Lean and Ronald Neame
- Deep smooth voice
- The book "Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography" (2003) reprints several letters that Guinness wrote to his longtime friend and correspondent Anne Kaufman Schneider in which he expressed his displeasure with and dubiousness about the quality of Star Wars (1977) as it was in production. Before filming started, he wrote: "I have been offered a movie (20th Century Fox) which I may accept, if they come up with proper money. London and North Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction--which gives me pause--but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps." Then after filming started, he wrote to Kaufman again to complain about the dialogue and describe his co-stars: "new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper--and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April. I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet--and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can't be right) Ford. Ellison (?--No!)--well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But oh God, God, they make me feel ninety--and treat me as if I was 106. Oh, [the actor's name is] Harrison Ford--ever heard of him?".
- George Lucas said Guinness was very patient and helpful to him during the filming of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), even to the point of getting the other actors to work more seriously.
- He was the only person to receive a best acting nomination in any of the Star Wars movies.
- In his last book of memoirs, "A Positively Final Appearance", he expressed a devotion to the television series The Simpsons (1989).
- In his autobiographical volumes, Guinness wrote about an incident at the Old Vic when, in the company of National Theater (which originally played at the Old Vic) artistic director Laurence Olivier in the basement of the theater, he asked where a certain tunnel went. Olivier did not really know but confidently decided to take the tunnel as it must come out somewhere nearby, it being part of the Old Vic. In reality, the tunnel went under the Thames, and they were rescued after several hours of fruitless navigation of the dark, damp corridor. Guinness remarked that Olivier's willingness to plunge into the dark and unknown was characteristic of the type of person (and actor) he was. As for himself as an actor, Guinness lamented at times that he did not take enough chances.
- [on how much he disliked working on Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and his attempts to encourage George Lucas to kill off Obi-Wan Kenobi] And he agreed with me. What I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo.
- I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) to me.
- Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.
- We live in an age of apologies. Apologies, false or true, are expected from the descendants of empire builders, slave owners, persecutors of heretics and from men who, in our eyes, just got it all wrong. So with the age of 85 coming up shortly, I want to make an apology. It appears I must apologize for being male, white and European.
- [in 1985 to The Guardian newspaper, on what he intends to do by the end of his life] A kind of little bow, tied on life. And I can see myself drifting off into eternity, or nothing, or whatever it may be, with all sorts of bits of loose string hanging out of my pocket. Why didn't I say this or do that, or why didn't I reconcile myself with someone? Or make sure that someone whom I like was all right in every way, either financially or, I don't know...
- Little Dorrit (1988) - £180,000
- Raise the Titanic (1980) - £45,000
- Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - $7,000,000
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - $150,000
- The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) - £6,000
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