Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness was born on April 2th, 1914 in London, England and was - like so many other great actors - not at all supposed to be an actor. The plan was for young Alec to be in advertising, but instead he began studying drama and he had his debut on the scene in 1934, 20 years old. Two years later he was a member of the permanent Shakesperean staff of Old Vic in London like was John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier and Michael Redgrave. His career as a stage actor was disrupted by World War II, where the later colonel of David Leans grand war epic "The Bridge On The River Kwai" from 1957, became a sailor in the British navy. After the war has the silver screen became more prominent in Guinness´ career and his breakthrough came in 1949, where he played all eight (!) murder victims of a murderous family outcast in the movie "Kind Hearts and Coronets" - several of the murder victims were women! He went on to great parts in movies like "The Man in the White Suit") from 1951, "River Kwai" from 1957 (for which he was awarded the first of his two Academy Awards, the second being his honourary Oscar in 1980), "Lawrence of Arabia" from 1962 and "Doctor Zhivago" from 1965. But it was in 1977 that Alec Guinness became a cult figure for young people around the world as the noble Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas´ first StarWars movie, and it is this role he will most likely be remembered for - which is ironically because Guinness supposedly loathed the part, and the movie, so much that he actually talked Lucas into killing of Kenobi in the first movie in order to not appear in the sequels. Kenobi does die in StarWars, but he returns in "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return Of The Jedi" so Guinness didn´t get it all his way. And even though he might regret it, the rest of os do not.

sir Alec Guinness died on Saturday August 5th, 2000.