Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; London, April 2, 1914 - Midhurst, West Sussex, August 5, 2000) was a British actor film, theater and television. After a long career on stage, Guinness was a regular participant in Ealing Studios comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played several roles, Gold in bars (The Lavender Hill Mob) (1951) and The Quintet of Death (The Ladykillers) (1955). He was a regular actor in the films of director David Lean (Great Expectations (1946), Oliver Twist (1948), The Bridge on the River Kwai (The Bridge on the River Kwai) (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (A Passage to India) (1984) Late in his career, one of his most iconic roles was as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's first Star Wars trilogy.

In 1957 Guinness won a Best Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai. He also received a 1980 Academy Honorary Award for his contribution to the art of motion pictures. He was nominated for an Oscar as a lead actor for The Lavender Hill Mob in 1951, and as a supporting actor for Star Wars in 1977 and Little Dorrit in 1988.

Biography

Early Years

Place where Guinness was born, with a blue plaque commemorating the fact.

Alec Guinness de Cuffe was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, in Maida Vale, London. His mother's name was Agnes Cuff, born 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield. According to the Guinness birth certificate, the boy's name (where only names are placed) is given as Alec Guinness, and there are no details of his father.

The identity of Guinness's father was never officially confirmed. Since 1875, when illegitimate births were required by English law to be registered, the father's name could only be included on the certificate with his consent. Guinness himself believed that his father was the Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes (1861–1928), who paid for Guinness's education at Pembroke Lodge in Southborne and Roborough in Eastbourne. Geddes occasionally visited Guinness and his mother, posing as an uncle.Years later, Guinness's mother married a Scottish army captain named Steven, whose behavior was erratic and violent.

Beginnings as a theater actor

Alec Guinness at the Old Vic Theatre, London in 1938.

Guinness first worked on writing commercial ad copy. His first stage role came on his 20th birthday (April 2, 1934), while he was still a student at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, in the play Libel, which was opening at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith. His performance did not go unnoticed by the public so his wages rose to £1 a week.In 1936, he appeared at the New Theater as Osric in the stage production Hamlet by John Gielgud. Beginning in 1936, Guinness began starring in classical roles at the Old Vic. In the late 1930s, he taught at the London Theater Studio. In 1939, he took over from Michael Redgrave as Charleston in the stage production Thunder Rock by Robert Ardrey. At the Old Vic, Guinness worked with many actors and actresses whom he befriended for future projects including Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle and Jack Hawkins. An early influence was movie star Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.

Guinness continued to perform Shakespearean works throughout his stage 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 1938 in Hamlet with which he received incredible reviews in both Britain and the United States. He also landed the role of Romeo in the production Romeo and Juliet (1939), Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Exeter in Henry V in 1937, the latter with Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, together with Gielgud like Prospero. In 1939, he adapted the novel for the stage Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, playing Herbert Pocket. The play was a real success. One of his viewers was the young film director David Lean, who seven years later would give him that same role in the film version of the play.

World War II

In 1941 he joined the Royal Navy as a seaman, before being promoted to second lieutenant on 30 April 1942 and to lieutenant the following year. Guinness led a landing infantry in the Allied invasion of Sicily, and subsequently offered supplies and information to Yugoslav partisans in the eastern Mediterranean theater of war.

During the war, he was granted permission to appear in the Broadway production of Terence Rattigan's Flare Path, about an RAF bomber, with Guinness playing Lieutenant Teddy Graham.

Theatrical career

Guinness returned to the Old Vic in 1946 and stayed there until 1948 in works such as Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, the madman in King Lear alongside Laurence Olivier, DeGuiche in Cyrano de Bergerac with Ralph Richardson or Richard II. After leaving the Old Vic, he played Eric Birling in J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls at the New Theater in October 1946, he visited Broadway performing in The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot (1950) and starred in Hamlet at the New Theater in the West End in 1951.

Invited by his friend Tyrone Guthrie to attend the premiere of the Stratford Festival in Canada, Guinness lived for a brief period in Stratford, Ontario. On July 13, 1953, Guinness delivered the opening lines of the first play produced by the festival, Ricardo III: "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

Guinness won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance of Dylan Thomas' play Dylan. Another of his roles was that of Macbeth opposite Simone Signoret at the Royal Court Theater in 1966. His last appearance Guinness made his last stage appearance at the Comedy Theater in the West End on 30th May 1989, with the work A Walk in the Woods. In all, from April 2, 1934 to May 30, 1989, he appeared in 77 stage productions in his career.

Film career

Nicholas Volpe drawing after Guinness won his Oscar in 1957 for his role in The bridge over the Kwai River

Guinness made his film debut with the version of Charles Dickens' play Broken Chains (Great Expectations) in 1946. In those early years, his figure was related to those of comedy comedy the Ealing Studios, where the versatility in Eight sentences of death (Kind Hearts and Coronets) (1949) stands out, in which she plays nine different roles, including that of a woman. Guinness was the great reference of Peter Sellers—who would become famous for playing a variety of characters in one film, with Sellers' first major role starring opposite his idol in The Ladykillers. Other notable films in this period include Gold bars (The Lavender Hill Mob) (for which he would get his first Oscar nomination), The man in the white suit (The Man in the White Suit) (1951) and The Quintet of Death (The Ladykillers) (1955), all ranked among the best British films of all time. 950 he played British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Imp and the Queen (The Mudlark), which includes a non-stop seven-minute speech in Parliament. In 1952, director Ronald Neame chose to Guinness for his romantic film, The Card opposite Petula Clark. In 1951, exhibitors voted him the UK's most popular actor.

Other notable Guinness performances include The Swan (1956) with Grace Kelly (in what was the penultimate film for the future Princess of Monaco); A Genius Is Loose (The Horse's Mouth) (1958), in which the actor plays the drunken painter Gulley Jimson. He was also the screenwriter of this film and for this work, he was nominated for an Oscar; the leading role Our Man in Havana (Our Man in Havana) (1959); Marcus Aurelius in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964); Conspiracy in Berlin (The Quiller Memorandum) (1966); the ghost of Marley in Thank you very much, Mr. Scrooge (Scrooge) (1970); Charles I of England in Cromwell (1970); Pope Innocent III in Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972); and a small role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (Hitler: The Last Ten Days) (1973), considered one of his best roles despite negative reviews from journalists. Other role which is sometimes referred to, and considered by many critics, as one of his best roles is that of Major Jock Sinclair in Whisky and Glory (Tunes of Glory) (1960).

A must for David Lean

Alec Guinness in Dr. Zhivago (1965).

Guinness gained special notoriety thanks to director David Lean, with whom he made his most acclaimed roles still today. In all, Guinness appeared in five Lean films that have been entered into the British Film Institute's 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). After appearing in Broken Chains (Great Expectations) and Oliver Twist , he was given the leading role opposite William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai (The Bridge on the River Kwai). For the role of Colonel Nicholson, Guinness won the Oscar for Best Actor and the BAFTA for Best Actor. Despite their evidently difficult and hostile relationship, Lean, referring to Guinness as 'my good luck charm', continued to cast Guinness in character roles in his later films: the Arabian prince Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia; Bolshevik leader and stepbrother Yevgraf, in Doctor Zhivago and Indian mystic Professor Godbole in A Passage to India. Lean also offered her a role in Ryan's Daughter (Ryan's Daughter) (1970) but she ended up turning it down. At the time, Guinness was "distrusted" de Lean and considered the previously close relationship strained, though, at his funeral, he recalled that the famed director had been "charming and affable."

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Interestingly, and despite how much he hated his role in the legendary George Lucas film, his presence was one of the ingredients that helped make it a success and the one that earned recognition for a new generation of viewers, as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. In letters to friends, Guinness describes the film as "fairytale rubbish" but the film's sense of moral goodness, and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer, appealed to him and he agreed to play the role of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do publicity to promote the film.

And it is that he initially negotiated an agreement for 2% of the film's profits, who, after the film's warm reception by the press and film critics, and as a gesture of goodwill for the amendments and positive suggestions that Guinness proposed to the film's script, he offered Guinness an additional 0.5%, bringing his stake to 2.5%. When Guinness inquired about the involvement with the film's producer Gary Kurtz, and requested a written agreement to encode his earnings, Kurtz revised Lucas's offer downward by 0.25%, bringing the final agreed part of Guinness of the royalties paid to the director at 2.25% (Lucas received a fifth of the total box office taking, which would bring Guinness's share of the total box office to approximately 0.45%). This made him into an absolutely rich person for the rest of his life.

After the first viewing of the film, Guinness wrote in his diaryː

It's a pretty amazing movie like show and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and hoarding. I think the battle scenes at the end last five minutes longer, and part of the dialogue is unbearable and much of it is lost in the noise. But it's still an exciting experience. "

Guinness did not like being identified with the role and expressed dismay that it would be a must-have for fans of the trilogy. In the DVD commentary, Lucas said that Guinness expressed his dissatisfaction with the rewrite of the script, in which Obi-Wan dies. But Guinness said in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to kill off Obi-Wan, persuading Lucas that he would make him a stronger character and that Lucas agreed to the idea. Guinness stated in the interview:

What I didn't tell Lucas was that I just couldn't keep talking those fucking banal and horrible lines. I've had enough of the palaver."

Although Guinness did not like the fame that followed his performance and did not hold the play in high regard, Lucas and fellow cast members such as Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels always spoke of it. the courtesy and professionalism of the actor both on and off set. Lucas cast him in to inspire the crew to work harder, saying Guinness contributed significantly to getting the shoot done. Guinness was quoted as saying that the benefits he earned from working in the movies gave him the ability to live without problems but "let me make this clear by saying that I can live the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way that I am now used to.", that I will not have debts and I can afford to reject a job that does not appeal to me". In his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, Guinness tells his imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars", thanking him for the benefits of appearing in this film. film. Guinness would appear in the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), as a ghost appearing to Luke Skywalker.

Private life

Guinness married playwright, artist, and actress Merula Silvia Salaman (1914–2000) in 1938. Two years later, they had their first child, Matthew Guinness, who would also become an actor. In the 1950s the family lived at Kettlebrook Meadows in Hampshire. The house was designed by Merula's brother, Eusty Salaman, and her grandson Nesta Guinness-Walker was a professional footballer.

In the biography, Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reports that Guinness was arrested with 10 guineas for homosexual acts in a public toilet in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness is said to have he avoided publicity and gave a false name to the police and the court and posed as "Herbert Pocket," the name of the character he played in "Great Expectations." In any case, no arrest record has been found. Piers Paul Read, in his 2005 biography, suggests that "The rumor is possibly a combination of stories about Alec's cottaging and the arrest of John Gielgud, in October 1953, in a public toilet in Chelsea after dining with the Guinnesses in St. Peter's Square.' This idea was not brought to light until April 2001, eight months after his death, when an article in BBC Showbiz reported that new books again pointed to Guinness's bisexuality and that he kept his sexuality private, only disclosing his relationships under other names to his closest friends and family members.

While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness had considered becoming an Anglican priest. But in 1954, while filming Father Brown in Burgundy, Guinness, playing a Catholic priest, was mistaken for a real priest by a street kid. In any case, Guinness was far from fluent in French, and the boy apparently didn't realize that Guinness didn't understand him, but he took his hand and chattered away as the two strolled; the boy then saluted and trotted away. This fact The confidence and fondness that the clerical garb seemed to inspire in the boy left a deep impression on the actor. When his son was ill with polio at age eleven, Guinness began to visit the church to pray. A few years later, in 1956, Guinness converted to the Catholic faith. His wife, who her father was of Sephardic Jewish descent, also converted in 1957 while he was in Ceylon filming The Bridge on the River Kwai, and informed him only after the conversion. morning, Guinness would recite a verse from Psalms 143, 'Make me hear your loving kindness in the morning'.

In 1955 he met actor James Dean by chance, to whom he said: "If you drive that car of yours, painted that color, it will be invisible to other drivers. It reflects the sun's rays too much... from afar it can't be seen. If you drive it, you will die in a week". Sure enough, James Dean died a week after having that conversation. This fact, however unreal it may seem, was confirmed by Guinness himself in his autobiographical book.

For his merits as an actor, he was knighted by the British court in 1959, making him Sir Alec Guinness.

Death

The Tombs of Alec and Merula in Petersfield, Hampshire

Guinness died on 5 August 2000 at King Edward VII's Hospital in Midhurst, West Sussex. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2000, and liver cancer two days earlier. die. His wife, who died on October 18, 2000, also died of liver cancer, they were both buried in Petersfield Cemetery, Hampshire.

Filmography

Guinnes e Yvonne De Carlo in a picture of the film The Captain's Paradise (1953)

Cinema

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Golden Globes

BAFTA

Tony Awards

Venice International Film Festival

• In 1958 he received the Medal of the Circle of Film Writers to the best foreign actor for his interpretation in Spain The bridge over the Kwai River.