Sir Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (1914 – 2000) was one of Britain’s greatest stage and film actors, whose decades-long career included roles such as his Oscar-winning performance in 1957’s Bridge on the River Kwai, as well as notable performances in movies ranging from Great Expectations and Oliver Twist in the 1940s, Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia in the 1960s, to perhaps the role for which he is best known today, as Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Star Wars trilogy – which he, ironically, thought was tripe. He was also a Royal Navy WWII veteran.
He began his career in the theater at age 20, while still a drama student, and by age 22 had attracted attention as a Shakespearean actor, and was befriended and mentored by stage legends of his day. After WWII broke out, Guinness enlisted as a seaman in the Royal Navy Reserves in 1941, at age 27, and by 1942, had been commissioned a naval officer.
He was ordered to Boston in 1943 to take charge of his first command, a freshly built landing craft. He sailed his ship and new crew across the Atlantic to North Africa, where they began training for the Allied invasion of Sicily. On July 9, 1943, he took 200 men to land on Passaro, Sicily, but due to a communications breakdown, was not apprised that the landing had been delayed, so his landing craft arrived on the beach alone and disembarked its troops an hour early. Later, he landed troops on the island of Elba, and during the Normandy invasion, and ferried agents and supplies to the Yugoslav partisans.
During the war, he was allowed a leave of absence to appear onstage in the play Flare Path, about the RAF’s Bomber Command. His wartime experiences led him to contemplate becoming a priest, but fortunately for the stage and film and millions of viewers worldwide, he decided to continue his acting career, which he resumed after his demobilization.