SIR ALEC GUINNESS
Name: Alec Guinness de Cuffe
Born: 2 April 1914 Paddington, London, England
Died: 5 August 2000 Midhurst, West Sussex, England
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 - 5 August 2000) was an Academy Award
and Tony Award-winning English actor.
Guinness was born on 2 April 1914 in Paddington, London as Alec Guinness de
Cuffe. Under the column for name (where the first names only are usually
stated) his birth certificate says 'Alec Guinness'. There is nothing written in
the column for name and surname of father. In the column for mother's name is
written 'Agnes de Cuffe'. On this basis it has been frequently speculated that
the actor's father was a member of the Irish Guinness family. However, his
benefactor was a Scottish banker named Andrew Geddes, and the similarity of his
name to the name written on the actor's birth certificate ('Alec Guinness') may
be a subtle reference to the identity of the actor's father. From 1875, English
law required both the presence and consent of the father when the birth of an
illegitimate child was registered in order for his name to be put on the
certificate. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff (born 8 December 1890),
daughter of Edward Cuff and wife Mary Ann Cuff Benfield. She would later marry a
shell shocked veteran of the Anglo-Irish War who, according to Guinness,
hallucinated that his own closets were filled with Sinn Féin gunmen waiting to
kill him.
The man who believed he was Alec Guinness' biological father, Andrew Geddes,
paid for the actor's private school education, but the two never met and the
identity of his father continues to be debated.
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. An early influence from afar was Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.
Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles 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 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' 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 film adaptation of the play.
Guinness served in the Royal Navy throughout World War II, serving first as a
seaman in 1941 and being commissioned the following year. 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 July 13, 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."
Guinness 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: Arab leader Prince Feisal in Lawrence of
Arabia; the title character's half-brother, Bolshevik leader Yevgraf, in Doctor
Zhivago; and Indian mystic Godbole in A Passage to India. 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 drunken 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), The Quiller Memorandum (1966),
Scrooge (1970), and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) (which he
considered his best film performance).
Guinness 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 Carre: 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.
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."
Guinness' 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 box office hit and negotiated a deal for two percent of the gross,
which made him very wealthy in later life.
Despite that, Guinness was never happy with being identified with the part, and
expressed great dismay at the fan following the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In
the DVD commentary of Star Wars: A New Hope, director George Lucas says that
Guinness was not happy with the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed.
However, Guinness stated in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to
kill off Obi Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character.
Lucas agreed to the idea, but Guinness confided in the interview, "what I didn't
tell [Lucas] was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal
lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He continued by saying that he "shrivelled
up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him[4]. Despite his dislike of the
films, fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher (as
well as Lucas) have always spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism on
and off the set; he did not let his distaste for the material show to his co-stars.
In fact, Lucas credited him with inspiring fellow cast and crew to work harder,
saying he was instrumental in helping to complete filming of the movies.
Many have also persistently suggested that he did not dislike Star Wars or the
role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, as several of his diary entries would indicate.
What he disliked was that many Star Wars fans were only familiar with his work
in those films, despite his distinguished career prior to that.
Guinness has been quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working
on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for
the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have
no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me". In his
autobiography, Blessings In Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed
be Star Wars!", while in the final volume of the book A Positively Final
Appearance (1997), he recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who
claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the fan
promised 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 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, without reading it.
Guinness married the artist, playwright, and actress, Merula Salaman in 1938,
and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor.
Guinness consulted Tarot cards for a time, but came to the conclusion that the
symbols of the cards mocked Christianity and Christ. He then burned his cards
and shortly afterwards converted to Roman Catholicism.
In his biography Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reveals that
Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas for a homosexual act in a public
lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name as
Herbert Pocket to both police and court. The name Herbert Pocket was taken from
the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that Guinness had played on
stage in 1939 and was also about to play in the film adaptation. The incident
did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death.
The authenticity of this incident has been doubted, however, including by Piers
Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, who believes that Guinness was mixed
up with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act at the same
period of time, though Read nonetheless acknowledges Guinness's essential
bisexuality.
While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness for a while planned on becoming an
Anglican minister. In 1954, however, during the shooting of the film Father
Brown, Alec and Merula Guinness were formally received into the Roman Catholic
Church. They would remain devout and regular church-goers for the remainder of
their lives. Their son Matthew had converted to Catholicism some time earlier.
Every morning, Guinness recited a verse from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your
loving kindness in the morning".
Guinness died on August 5, 2000, 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. Merula Guinness died of cancer two months later and was interred
alongside her husband of 62 years.
Name: Alec Guinness de Cuffe
Born: 2 April 1914 Paddington, London, England
Died: 5 August 2000 Midhurst, West Sussex, England
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 - 5 August 2000) was an Academy Award
and Tony Award-winning English actor.
Guinness was born on 2 April 1914 in Paddington, London as Alec Guinness de
Cuffe. Under the column for name (where the first names only are usually
stated) his birth certificate says 'Alec Guinness'. There is nothing written in
the column for name and surname of father. In the column for mother's name is
written 'Agnes de Cuffe'. On this basis it has been frequently speculated that
the actor's father was a member of the Irish Guinness family. However, his
benefactor was a Scottish banker named Andrew Geddes, and the similarity of his
name to the name written on the actor's birth certificate ('Alec Guinness') may
be a subtle reference to the identity of the actor's father. From 1875, English
law required both the presence and consent of the father when the birth of an
illegitimate child was registered in order for his name to be put on the
certificate. His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff (born 8 December 1890),
daughter of Edward Cuff and wife Mary Ann Cuff Benfield. She would later marry a
shell shocked veteran of the Anglo-Irish War who, according to Guinness,
hallucinated that his own closets were filled with Sinn Féin gunmen waiting to
kill him.
The man who believed he was Alec Guinness' biological father, Andrew Geddes,
paid for the actor's private school education, but the two never met and the
identity of his father continues to be debated.
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. An early influence from afar was Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.
Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles 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 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' 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 film adaptation of the play.
Guinness served in the Royal Navy throughout World War II, serving first as a
seaman in 1941 and being commissioned the following year. 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 July 13, 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."
Guinness 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: Arab leader Prince Feisal in Lawrence of
Arabia; the title character's half-brother, Bolshevik leader Yevgraf, in Doctor
Zhivago; and Indian mystic Godbole in A Passage to India. 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 drunken 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), The Quiller Memorandum (1966),
Scrooge (1970), and the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) (which he
considered his best film performance).
Guinness 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 Carre: 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.
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."
Guinness' 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 box office hit and negotiated a deal for two percent of the gross,
which made him very wealthy in later life.
Despite that, Guinness was never happy with being identified with the part, and
expressed great dismay at the fan following the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In
the DVD commentary of Star Wars: A New Hope, director George Lucas says that
Guinness was not happy with the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed.
However, Guinness stated in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to
kill off Obi Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character.
Lucas agreed to the idea, but Guinness confided in the interview, "what I didn't
tell [Lucas] was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal
lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He continued by saying that he "shrivelled
up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him[4]. Despite his dislike of the
films, fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher (as
well as Lucas) have always spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism on
and off the set; he did not let his distaste for the material show to his co-stars.
In fact, Lucas credited him with inspiring fellow cast and crew to work harder,
saying he was instrumental in helping to complete filming of the movies.
Many have also persistently suggested that he did not dislike Star Wars or the
role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, as several of his diary entries would indicate.
What he disliked was that many Star Wars fans were only familiar with his work
in those films, despite his distinguished career prior to that.
Guinness has been quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working
on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for
the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have
no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me". In his
autobiography, Blessings In Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed
be Star Wars!", while in the final volume of the book A Positively Final
Appearance (1997), he recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who
claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the fan
promised 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 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, without reading it.
Guinness married the artist, playwright, and actress, Merula Salaman in 1938,
and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor.
Guinness consulted Tarot cards for a time, but came to the conclusion that the
symbols of the cards mocked Christianity and Christ. He then burned his cards
and shortly afterwards converted to Roman Catholicism.
In his biography Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reveals that
Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas for a homosexual act in a public
lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name as
Herbert Pocket to both police and court. The name Herbert Pocket was taken from
the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that Guinness had played on
stage in 1939 and was also about to play in the film adaptation. The incident
did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death.
The authenticity of this incident has been doubted, however, including by Piers
Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, who believes that Guinness was mixed
up with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act at the same
period of time, though Read nonetheless acknowledges Guinness's essential
bisexuality.
While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness for a while planned on becoming an
Anglican minister. In 1954, however, during the shooting of the film Father
Brown, Alec and Merula Guinness were formally received into the Roman Catholic
Church. They would remain devout and regular church-goers for the remainder of
their lives. Their son Matthew had converted to Catholicism some time earlier.
Every morning, Guinness recited a verse from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your
loving kindness in the morning".
Guinness died on August 5, 2000, 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. Merula Guinness died of cancer two months later and was interred
alongside her husband of 62 years.