A biography of Sir Alec Guiness, star of Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars, and many others.
Sir Alec Guinness, one of the most subtle and versatile actors to grace both stage and screen, was born in London on April 2, 1914. Despite being discouraged from attending school theatrical performances by his headmaster at Pembroke Lodge, a boarding school, his role of the urgent messenger in the school production of "Macbeth" at Roborough School in Eastbourne rekindled his passion for acting, after his peers and teachers praised his small but powerful performance. It was to be a precedent for a burgeoning acting career.
Having finished his schooling years in 1932, he worked as an apprentice copywriter for an advertising agency in London. He applied to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art in 1933, which granted him a scholarship. But he found the classes tedious and boring, and left seven months later - with a major award presented by the judges, John Gielgud among them.
In 1934 Sir Alec got three small bit parts in a melodramatic production called "Queer Cargo", and a walk-on part in "Libel". Literally a starving actor, he braved the odds of writing directly to John Gielgud, at the time very successful and ten years his senior. Gielgud cast him as Osric and the Third Player in his production of "Hamlet" at the New Theatre. This boosted his credits, and in 1938 he played Hamlet in a Tyrone Guthrie production at the Old Vic.
Before enlisting in the Royal Navy in 1941 (where he was to become a landing-craft operator) he had played 34 roles in 23 plays. He resumed his stage and newfound writing career after the war, portarying the role of Mitya in his own rendition of Dostoyevski's "Brothers Karamazov". Other postwar roles included Sartre's "Vicious Circle", as the Dauphin in Shaw's "Saint Joan" and, in the title role, Shakespeare's "Richard II".
He decided to tackle movies and, in 1946, was cast by director David Lean - who he was to work with in future films "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Laurence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago" - as Pocket in the timeless version of Dickens' "Great Expectations". Next he played Fagin in "Oliver Twist". By 1949, now a modestly renowned actor, he made "A Run for Your Money" and "Kind Hearts and Coronets." It was this latter performance - in which he played eight different characters - which achieved the recognition he so desperately needed.
To a large extent, it was this chameleonic role which would typecast him as an actor capable of portraying many different roles. Also in 1949, he played a ruminative psychiatrist in TS Eliot's "Cocktail Party", which he took to Broadway the following year due to its success. Small yet memorable screen performances included a bank clerk who masterminds the smuggling of gold bullion out of England in "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951), a comedic role as a flirtatious skipper in "The Captain's Paradise" (1953) and as a sly sleuth in "The Detective" (1954).
But his most appealing and engrossing role was to come in 1957 as the paradoxical Colonel Nicholson in "Bridge on the River Kwai", for which he won an Oscar in 1958. That same year he was Oscar-nominated for his screenplay for "The Horse's Mouth", and knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
Despite his obvious success on screen, Guinness did not totally abandon the stage. In 1964 on Broadway, he played the title role in "Dylan", a play about the last alcoholic-stupor-driven months of poet Dylan Thomas. The role was played so well he scooped up virtually all the stage awards for that year.
Aside from the unforgettable and timeless role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars series - "Star Wars (1977); "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980); and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" (1983) - and for which he received 2% of gross ticket sales, he was also awarded an honorary Oscar in 1980.
His television appearances of John le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People" were, once again, small but memorable.
He died August 5, 2000 at the age of 86 and is survived by his wife Merula Saluman and his son Matthew.
