Born Alec Guinness de Cuffe, on April 2, 1914, in London, England. His mother was Agnes Cuffe; the identity of his father was unknown, although is now widely believed to have been Andrew Geddes, an elderly, married Scottish banker. When Alec was five years old, his mother married a Scottish army captain named David Stiven. The unhappy marriage lasted just three years, but Alec was known as Alec Stiven throughout preparatory school. He had an early enthusiasm for drama, and won his first role as a messenger in a production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Roborough School. After finishing school in 1932, Guinness began working as an apprentice copywriter in a London advertising agency. His desire to act soon won him over, however, and in 1933 he auditioned for and won a modest scholarship to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art. He left after seven months, but not before winning a major prize at an acting recital judged by, among others, the actor John Gielgud. In 1934, Guinness played three small roles in a stage melodrama called Queer Cargo. He got his first big break in November of that year, when Gielgud cast him as the Third Player and later as Osric in his production of Hamlet. Guinness would later refer to Gielgud repeatedly as “the great hero of my youth.” A critics’ favorite from the beginning of his career, Guinness appeared in Gielgud’s revival of Romeo and Juliet in 1935 and understudied Laurence Olivier in a 1936-37 production of Hamlet at the Old Vic. He played the melancholy Dane himself for the first time in 1937, in a modern-dress version of the play directed by Tyrone Guthrie. By the time World War II began and Guinness enlisted in the Royal Navy, he had appeared in over 20 major stage productions and had worked with such acting heavyweights as Gielgud, Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, and Edith Evans (all four, like Guinness, were later given honorary titles by the British crown). After returning from his Navy stint, during which he had risen to command a transport ship, Guinness began to make the transition from stage to screen stardom. He had appeared as an extra in his first film, Evensong (1934), but made his first substantial film appearance as Pocket in the now-classic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946), directed by David Lean. Two years later, Guinness played the evil Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), also directed by Lean. The film’s release in the United States was delayed for two years because of pressure brought by groups who saw Guinness’ characterization of Fagin as anti-Semitic. The controversy eventually brought Guinness’ considerable talents to the attention of a worldwide audience. Guinness cemented his marketability as a film actor in 1949 with Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which he played an assortment of wacky members of an English family. He had another international success, this time on the stage, with T.S. Eliot’s Cocktail Party, which he brought to Broadway from London in 1950 to critical and commercial acclaim. Still seeing himself as more of a tragedian than a comic actor, Guinness directed and starred in another production of Hamlet in the West End in 1951. The play flopped, encouraging Guinness to spend more and more time on his film career. Over the next four decades, Guinness won over both critics and audiences with his ability to play both comedic and dramatic roles with equal aplomb. His plain-featured but malleable face made him an ideal comic hero in such crowd-pleasing 1950s comedies as The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Captain’s Paradise (1953), Father Brown (1954), and The Ladykillers (1955). His first Hollywood film was The Swan (1956), a comedy co-starring Grace Kelly. In 1957, Guinness turned in his most triumphant dramatic performance, winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Bridge on the River Kwai, in which he starred as a British colonel imprisoned in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma. He received another Oscar nomination the next year, this time as a screenwriter, for the satirical film The Horse’s Mouth (1958), which he had adapted from Joyce Cary’s novel. (He also starred in the film as the disreputable artist Gulley Jimson.) During the 1960s, Guinness continued his stellar work on stage and screen, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance as the hard-drinking Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in Dylan (1964). In 1962, he appeared in two films, the comedy A Majority of One and the drama-adventure Lawrence of Arabia, co-starring Peter O’Toole. He also appeared in David Lean’s 1965 adaptation of Doctor Zhivago and in The Comedians (1967), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. After a string of disappointing films in the early 1970s, Guinness turned in a scene-stealing performance in the wacky Murder by Death (1976), written by Neil Simon. In 1977, Guinness reached a whole new generation of film audiences with his role as Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi in the blockbuster hit Star Wars, produced and directed by George Lucas. He reprised the role in the film’s equally successful sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Guinness’ later films included Lean’s A Passage to India (1984) and a 1988 adaptation of Dickens’ Little Dorrit. He also earned a good deal of success on television, playing the retired British intelligence officer George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1980) and Smiley’s People (1982), two miniseries based on the bestselling novels by John le Carré. Guinness was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the late 1950s, at the age of 45, less than halfway through his impressive career. He also received an honorary Academy Award in 1980 for advancing the art of screen acting. Guinness is the author of three autobiographical works, Blessings in Disguise (1985), My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (1997), and A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-98 (1999). In his later years, the legendary actor spent less and less time in the public eye, choosing to live quietly in Hampshire, England, with his wife, Merula Salaman. The couple married in 1938 after both appeared as animals in Gielgud’s production of Noah. They had one son, Matthew. Guinness died on August 5, 2000, at the age of 86. This biography (with some small amendments) was taken from www.biography.com. ___________________________________ QUOTES: "I was always rather embarrassed with me personally, and I was glad to go into a thin cardboard disguise." "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." "An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents." "I don't know what else I could do but pretend to be an actor." "Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one." "I rejoice that I have retired from theatre and films and am no longer tempted to risk making an ass of myself in public. Not so much a case of 'Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?' as 'If you are an old, featherless pouter pigeon, stick to the dovecote.'" __________________________________ AWARDS & NOMINATIONS – FILM & TELEVISION: ACADEMY AWARDS (OSCARS): - THE LAVENDER HILL MOB: (Nomination for Best Actor, 1951). - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1957). - THE HORSE’S MOUTH: (Nomination for Best Screenplay, 1958). - STAR WARS: (Nomination for Best Supporting Actor, 1977). - Honorary Award "For advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances, 1979. - LITTLE DORRIT: (Nomination for Best Supporting Actor, 1988). BRITISH ACADEMY AWARDS (BAFTAS): - THE PRISONER: (Nomination for Best British Actor, 1956). - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best British Actor Award, 1957). - THE HORSE’S MOUTH: (Nomination for Best British Screenplay, 1958). - TUNES OF GLORY: (Nomination for Best British Actor, 1961). VARIETY CLUB AWARDS: - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1957). GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS: - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best Supporting Actor Award, 1957). - STAR WARS: (Nomination for Best Supporting Actor, 1977). - LITTLE DORRIT: (Nomination for Best Supporting Actor, 1988). EMMYS: - THE WICKED SCHEME OF JEBAL DEEKS: (Nomination for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor (Lead or Support), (1960). - SMILEY’S PEOPLE: (Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Special, 1983). BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL: - Winner of the Honorary Golden Bear Award, 1988. VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: - THE HORSE’S MOUTH: (Winner of the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, 1958). EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS: - Winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award, 1996. NEW YORK FILM CRITICS AWARDS: - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1957). LOS ANGELES FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS: - LITTLE DORRIT: (Winner of the Best Supporting Actor Award, 1988). ITALIAN NATIONAL SYNDICATE OF FILM JOURNALISTS: - THE LAVENDER HILL MOB: (Winner of the Best Actor In A Foreign Film Award, 1952). ACADEMY OF SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & HORROR: - STARS WARS: (Winner of the Best Supporting Actor Award, 1977). EVENING STANDARD FILM AWARDS: - Winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995. NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW: - KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1950). - THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1957). ___________________________________ THEATRE AWARDS: EVENING STANDARD THEATRE AWARDS: - ROSS: (Winner of the Best Actor Award, 1960). TONY AWARDS: - DYLAN: (Winner of the Best Actor in a play Award, 1964). ___________________________________ HONOURS: - CBE (Commander of the British Empire), 1955. - KNIGHTHOOD, 1959. - D. LITT. Oxford University, 1977. - HONORARY D. LITT. Cambridge University, 1991. - COMPANION OF HONOUR, 1994.