ALEC GUINNESS, FROM SHAKESPEARE TO STAR WARS

Alex Guinness

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some films interpreted by one of her favourite actors, Alec Guinness, who died on a day like today in 2000.

She thinks that the best way to pat tribute to Alec Guinness is talking about him and his incredible roles along his amazing career.

Alec Guinness (2 April 1914-5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played nine different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955).

He collaborated six times with director David Lean in Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984).

He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.

More information: The Guardian

Guinness began his stage career in 1934. Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic. He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career. He was one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from theatre to films after the Second World War.

Guinness served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the war and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba. During the war he was granted leave to appear in the stage play Flare Path about RAF Bomber Command.

Guinness won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Tony Award.

In 1959 he was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.

Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.

Guinness was born Alec Guinness de Cuffe at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale in London. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff, born on 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield.

Alec Guinness

On Guinness's birth certificate, his mother's name is given as Agnes de Cuffe; the infant's name, where first names only are placed, is given as Alec Guinness, and there are no details for the father.

Guinness first worked writing advertising copy. His first job in the theatre was on his 20th birthday (April 1934), while he was still a drama student, in the play Libel, which opened at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and then transferred to the West End's Playhouse, where his status was raised from a walk-on to understudying two lines, and his salary increased to £1 a week.

He appeared at the Albery Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet. Also in 1936, Guinness signed on with the Old Vic, where he was cast in a series of classic roles.

In 1939, he took over for Michael Redgrave as Charleston in a road-show production of Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock. At the Old Vic, Guinness worked with many actors and actresses who would become his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle, and Jack Hawkins. An early influence was film star Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.

Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles throughout his career. 

In 1937, he played 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), Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and as Exeter in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero.

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

More information: Houston Chronicle

Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, initially as a seaman in 1941, before receiving a commission as a temporary Sub-lieutenant on 30 April 1942 and a promotion to Temporary Lieutenant the following year.

Guinness then commanded a landing craft at the Allied invasion of Sicily, and later ferried supplies and agents to the Yugoslav partisans in the eastern Mediterranean theatre.

R2D2, C3PO, Obi Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker

Guinness returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed until 1948, playing in The Alchemist, King Lear, Cyrano de Bergerac and Shakespeare's Richard II.

In films, Guinness was initially associated mainly with the Ealing Comedies, and particularly for playing nine characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Other films from this period included The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), with all three ranked among the Best British films.

In 1950 he portrayed 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark, which included delivering an uninterrupted seven minute speech in Parliament.

In 1952, director Ronald Neame cast Guinness in his first romantic lead role, opposite Petula Clark in The Card. In 1951, exhibitors voted him the most popular British star. Guinness was idolised by Peter Sellers -who himself would become famous for inhabiting a variety of characters in a film- with Sellers's first major film role starring alongside his idol in The Ladykillers.

Guinness's other notable film roles of this period included The Swan (1956) with Grace Kelly, in her penultimate film role; The Horse's Mouth (1958), in which Guinness played the part of drunken painter Gulley Jimson, and for which he also wrote the screenplay, which was nominated for an Academy Award; the lead in Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana (1959); Marcus Aurelius in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964); The Quiller Memorandum (1966); Marley's Ghost in Scrooge (1970); Charles I in Cromwell (1970); Pope Innocent III in Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972); and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), which he considered his best film performance, though critics disagreed.

Another role which is sometimes referred to as one which he considered his best, and is so considered by many critics, is that of Colonel Jock Sinclair in Tunes of Glory (1960). Guinness also played the role of Jamessir Bensonmum, the blind butler, in the 1976 Neil Simon film Murder by Death.

More information: Cinema Blend

Guinness won particular acclaim for his work with director David Lean, which today is his most critically acclaimed work. After appearing in Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, he was given a starring role opposite William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai. For his performance as Colonel Nicholson, the unyielding British POW commanding officer, Guinness won an Academy Award for Best Actor and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor.

Guinness appeared in five Lean films that were ranked in the British Film Institute's top 50 greatest British films of the 20th century: 3rd (Lawrence of Arabia), 5th (Great Expectations), 11th (The Bridge on the River Kwai), 27th (Doctor Zhivago) and 46th (Oliver Twist).

Guinness's role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition to a new generation, as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. In letters to his friends, Guinness described the film as fairy tale rubbish but the film's sense of moral good -and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer- appealed to him and he agreed to take the part of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do any publicity to promote the film.

In 2003, Obi-Wan Kenobi as portrayed by Guinness was selected as the 37th-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute. 

Digitally altered archival audio of Guinness's voice was used in the films Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

Guinness died on the night of 5 August 2000 at Midhurst in West Sussex. He was interred at Petersfield Cemetery, Hampshire.

More information: The New York Times

An actor is totally vulnerable.

His total personality is exposed to critical judgment 

-his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance.

In short, his ego.

Alec Guinness