Alec Guinness(1914-2000)
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Alec Guinness was an English actor of stage and screen, his career spanning over sixty years. His best known screen works are his starring roles in several of the Ealing comedies between 1949 and 1957 (most notably as eight members of the same family in Noblesse oblige (1949), his Oscar-nominated turn as bank clerk turned bullion robber in De l'or en barres (1951), an inventor who never gives up in L'homme au complet blanc (1951), and as one of five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery in Tueurs de dames (1955)); his six collaborations over 38 years with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Les grandes espérances (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1957), (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence d'Arabie (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Le docteur Jivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in La route des Indes (1984); his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); and his starring role as George Smiley in the television adaptations of John le Carré's La taupe (1979) and Les Gens de Smiley (1982).
His gallery of notable characters (both fictional and historical) also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Le moineau de la Tamise (1950), an enterprising rogue in Trois dames et un as (1952), a sleuthing priest in Détective du bon Dieu (1954), an eccentric London artist in De la bouche du cheval (1958) (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter), a wayward Scottish army officer in Les fanfares de la gloire (1960), the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), King Charles I in Cromwell (1970), the title role in Les dix derniers jours d'Hitler (1973), a blind butler in Un cadavre au dessert (1976), a survivor of the Titanic disaster in La guerre des abîmes (1980), and a return to Dickens' territory (and a final Oscar nomination) as William Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1987).
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.
His gallery of notable characters (both fictional and historical) also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Le moineau de la Tamise (1950), an enterprising rogue in Trois dames et un as (1952), a sleuthing priest in Détective du bon Dieu (1954), an eccentric London artist in De la bouche du cheval (1958) (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter), a wayward Scottish army officer in Les fanfares de la gloire (1960), the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), King Charles I in Cromwell (1970), the title role in Les dix derniers jours d'Hitler (1973), a blind butler in Un cadavre au dessert (1976), a survivor of the Titanic disaster in La guerre des abîmes (1980), and a return to Dickens' territory (and a final Oscar nomination) as William Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1987).
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.
