Alec Guinness de Cuffe
21 min read
Reading time
4,017
Words
Published
95
Film credits
19
Awards
Alec Guinness earned the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957. He also starred as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977. His career included playing eight roles in Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949 and collaborating with director David Lean on six films.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Alec Guinness — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Alec Guinness by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Alec Guinness — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Born in Marylebone, London on April 2, 1914 as Alec Guinness de Cuffe, he never knew his biological father and was raised by his mother Agnes Cuff. He later discovered his father was likely Scottish banker Andrew Geddes, who funded his education at Fettes College. He took elocution lessons as a child and briefly studied acting under Martita Hunt, who dismissed him after two lessons, claiming he would never become an actor.
Guinness’s breakthrough came through Ealing comedies: he played eight members of the same family in Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949, then earned an Oscar nomination for The Lavender Hill Mob 1951. His collaboration with David Lean began with Great Expectations 1946 and culminated in his Oscar-winning performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957. He later took on the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars 1977, which resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His career also included acclaimed television work as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1979.
Guinness married actress Merula Salaman on June 20, 1938, and they remained together until his death. Their son, Matthew Guinness, was born years later and recovered from polio as a boy. The couple converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1950s. Guinness struggled with his own unhappy nature, attributed to his unknown father and difficult childhood. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1959 for services to the arts.
Guinness was the only performer to receive an acting nomination for any Star Wars film. His role as Obi-Wan Kenobi influenced Ewan McGregor’s preparation for the prequels. He has five films in the National Film Registry. In 1980 he received an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement. His career spanned character roles in Ealing comedies and the mentor role Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.
The complete filmography of Alec Guinness — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Alec Guinness — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Alec Guinness — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
Failure Has a Thousand Explanations. Success Doesn’t Need One.
We Live in an Age of Apologies. Apologies, False or True, Are Expected from the Descendants of Empire Builders, Slave Owners, Persecutors of Heretics and from Men Who, in Our Eyes, Just Got It All Wrong. so with the Age of 85 Coming up Shortly, I Want to Make an Apology. It Appears I Must Apologize for Being Male, White and European.
I Gave My Best Performances During the War, Trying to Be an Officer and a Gentleman.
I Prefer Full Length Camera Shots Because the Body Can Act Better Than the Face.
I Don’t Know What Else I Could Do but Pretend to Be an Actor.
Once I’ve Done a Film, It’s Finished. I Never Look at It Again.
An Actor Is an Interpreter of Other Men’s Words, Often a Soul Which Wishes to Reveal Itself to the World but Dare Not, a Craftsman, a Bag of Tricks, a Vanity Bag, a Cool Observer of Mankind, a Child and 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.
Personally, I Have Only One Great Regret That I Never *Dared* Enough. If at All.
Essentially I’m a Small Part Actor Who’s Been Lucky Enough to Play Leading Roles for Most of His Life.
Flamboyance Doesn’t Suit Me. I Enjoy Being Elusive.
I Am Always Ashamed of the Slowness of My Reading. I Think It Stems from the Fact That When I Come Across Dialogue in a Novel, I Can’t Resist Treating It as the Text of a Play and Acting It Out, with Significant Pauses and All.
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.
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.
I Can Walk Through a Crowd and Nobody Would Notice at All.
Actually, My Boarding School Days Were Very Happy. When I Was 5, My Mother Married . . . Someone, and They Wanted to Go Off, so I Was Sort of Pushed off to Boarding School, but It Became the Most Solid Part of My Life. There Were the Same Boys, Term in and Term Out, and in Fact It Was the Holidays That Were Never Stable. I Never Knew in What Hotel, in What Town, I Would Find My Mother.
I’ve Worked All Over the World, Often Through No Conscious Decision I Was Aware of at the Time, Other Than Perhaps to Visit a Place I Hadn’t Been Before. Like Anyone Else, I Have to Earn My Living. Very Often, I’ve Accepted Work Just for the Work. Like Any Actor, I Grow Very Nervous When I’m Out of a Job. I Think Every Offer Is the Last One I’ll Receive.
Pride Played a Part in My Decision to Retire. I Don’t Wish to Be Seen as I Am Now When I Know There Was Something Better on Offer 30 Years Ago.
I Never Had Any Success in Hollywood. I Made Three Movies in Hollywood and They Were All Flops. the Pictures People Think of as Hollywood Hits, Such as Bridge on the River Kwai, Were in Fact British Productions. Peter Ustinov Told Me That When You Work in Hollywood, How They Treat You Depends on the Role You Are Playing. If You’re Playing a King, They Treat You Like Royalty. If You’re a Character Actor… in Any Event, the Great Movie Stars Have All Been American. Or, If Not American Like Greta Garbo or Cary Grant Actors Who Worked Totally Within the American Film Industry.
The Character I Play in Love Sick. I’m Sigmund Freud. I Appear in Some of Dudley Moore’s Fantasies, Smoking a Very Long Cigar. but … the Star Wars Pictures. How Did I Like Doing Them? I Liked the People Very Much. But, No, They’re Not Really Much Fun to Act In, Not When You’re Put Totally in the Hands of Technicians and Asked to Sit in a Cylinder and Imagine Explosions. That’s Only Amusing for a Time. but the People Couldn’t Have Been Nicer, of Course. I’ve Just Finished My Role in Return of the Jedi, Which Is the Third in the Series.
Little-known facts about Alec Guinness — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
In letters reprinted in the authorized biography, Guinness wrote to Anne Kaufman Schneider during the production of Star Wars 1977 complaining about the dialogue and describing his co-stars as a dwarf and Harrison Ford, whom he called a rangy, languid young man.
George Lucas said Guinness was patient and helpful to him during the filming of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope 1977, even getting the other actors to work more seriously.
In his last book of memoirs, A Positively Final Appearance, Guinness expressed a devotion to the television series The Simpsons 1989.
He was the only person to receive a best acting nomination in any of the Star Wars movies.
According to playwright Neil Simon, while on set filming Murder by Death 1976, Guinness read the screenplay for Star Wars and commented it may be a good one.
Upon being notified of a lifetime achievement Oscar, Guinness initially declined to attend but was persuaded by Dustin Hoffman after Academy President Fay Kanin asked Hoffman to meet with him in London.
While filming The Swan 1956 in Hollywood, Guinness met James Dean days before his death and advised him to get rid of his Porsche or he would be dead in a week.
Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars 1977, which he estimated earned him around $9 million in the first year, as revealed in a 1977 BBC interview with Michael Parkinson.
The root of Guinness’s unhappy nature was said to be his not knowing his real father, and for the first several years of his life he claimed he had no idea what his real name was.
Guinness took great pains to avoid his working-class roots and difficult childhood, which were sources of his deep unhappiness.
Although knighted, he did not like being referred to as Sir Alec Guinness.
He stayed in touch on occasion with Star Wars co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.
He reportedly answered a Star Wars fan’s boast of seeing the movie over a hundred times with the words Promise me you will never watch it again.
Despite popular belief, Guinness never uttered the line May the force be with you in any Star Wars film; he said the force will be with you.
In his autobiographical volumes, Guinness wrote about an incident at the Old Vic when he and Laurence Olivier took a tunnel that they thought was a corridor but actually went under the Thames, requiring rescue after several hours.
He preferred working on stage to appearing in films, and preferred newer plays to classics so his performances would not be compared.
Harrison Ford said Guinness helped him find an apartment in England when he arrived to film Star Wars.
During his early days as a theatre actor, Guinness would cringe with embarrassment when his mother visited him and requested money, as she was usually drunk.
When discovering Sir Ian McKellen was gay, Guinness strongly advised him not to go public about his sexuality.
His wife of 62 years, Merula Salaman, passed away on October 17, 2000, just two months after her husband. They were both age 86.
As an actor, Guinness didn’t believe in the idea of making sequels.
Although Guinness and Jack Hawkins each had top billings in The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 and Lawrence of Arabia 1962, they only shared one scene together in each film, both coincidentally near the endings. Both films won Best Picture Oscars.
Not long before his death, Guinness gave clear instructions for his diaries to be destroyed.
A heavy smoker for most of his life, he finally managed to give up the habit in his last years.
One of his last jobs was providing a voice-over for a British television ad campaign by the Inland Revenue about new tax return forms, recorded on March 30, 1995, which he said he did feebly.
After making their only film together, Guinness stayed in touch with Grace Kelly until her death on September 14, 1982.
In certain prints of The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957, his last name is misspelled Guiness.
During World War II, he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a seaman before being promoted to Sub-lieutenant then Temporary Lieutenant, commanding a landing craft on the invasion of Sicily and delivering supplies to Yugoslavian partisans.
Describing himself as a social thief, Guinness referred to his days as a young man when he adapted himself to resemble the upper classes; he said his best performance was pretending to be an officer and a gentleman while in the Royal Navy.
He rigidly protected his privacy and rarely granted interviews, and when he did, he ensured nothing was revealed about himself.
Many of his films were studied by Ewan McGregor in preparation for his role as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 1999.
He was reluctant to reprise his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi for cameo appearances in Star Wars Episodes V and VI, claiming he only agreed as a favor to George Lucas.
Close colleagues described Guinness as a fundamentally unhappy man, often plagued by his own inner demons throughout his life.
His mother was Agnes Cuffe; his father believed to be Andrew Geddes, a Scottish banker who paid for his education at Fettes College.
He went bald on top, and according to a Time magazine cover story of April 21, 1958, he was embarrassed by it but chose not to wear a hairpiece in private life; he had shaved the top of his head as a young man in his first professional acting engagement, playing a coolie, and it never grew back properly.
He had elocution lessons as a child.
He was one of the last surviving members of a great generation of British actors, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Ralph Richardson.
According to official biographer Piers Paul Read, after the passing of Guinness’s mother at a nursing home, the actor celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne.
He is one of the biggest idols of fellow actor Mark Hamill.
He was a Grammy Award nominee in 1964 in the Spoken Word category for the album Alec Guinness: A Personal Choice RCA Victor Red Seal: 1964, on which he read a selection of his favorite poems.
His son had polio as a boy but fully recovered from the condition.
In the last year of his life, Guinness had been receiving hospital treatment for failing eyesight due to glaucoma, and he had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer in January 2000; when liver cancer was discovered in July 2000, it was at an extremely advanced stage.
Both he and his wife, Merula Salaman, converted to the Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s.
He has appeared in five films selected for the National Film Registry: The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957, Lawrence of Arabia 1962, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope 1977, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back 1980, and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi 1983.
At a young age, Guinness received acting lessons from Martita Hunt, who dismissed him after two lessons, telling him he would never be an actor, though lessons were resumed later.
He had high hopes about working opposite Bette Davis in The Scapegoat 1959 but ended up feeling disappointed and disliking Davis.
He generally regarded Lord Laurence Olivier with feelings of disdain and anger; according to friend Simon Callow, Sir John Gielgud was very supportive of Guinness when he was a struggling actor, and Olivier insinuated their relationship was transactional, which offended Guinness deeply.
In his volume Blessings in Disguise, Guinness confessed to harboring feelings of loathing and hatred toward his violent-tempered stepfather, and he would flee in terror at the sight of him.
Even among close companions, Guinness wasn’t one for displaying intimacy; those who claimed to know him best said he had an impenetrable inner core.
Ewan McGregor was not the only actor in the Star Wars prequels to study his performances; the voice for the character Watto was modeled after Guinness’s performance as Fagin in Oliver Twist 1948.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Alec Guinness.
Celebrities similar to Alec Guinness — same craft, ranked by reach.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
🇺🇸 United States
