19. From the British Stage to Hollywood Stardom
Alec Guinness de Cuffe (1914 – 2000), better known as Alec Guinness or Sir Alec Guinness after he was knighted in 1959, was one of Britain’s greatest stage and film actors. He began his career in the theater at age twenty while he was still a drama student. By the time he turned twenty-two, Guinness had attracted attention as a Shakespearean actor and was befriended and mentored by the stage legends of his day. After his conquest of the British stage, Guinness set his eyes on new horizons and found significant success across The Pond in Hollywood.
Highlights of the decades-long career of Sir Alec Guinness include stellar roles such as his performance in 1957’s Bridge on the River Kwai, which netted him an Oscar for Best Actor. He had other notable performances in movies such as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist in the 1940s, and Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia in the 1960s. However, the performance for which he is probably best known today as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy – a role that, ironically, he thought was tripe. A lesser-known fact about him is that he was a British Royal Navy WWII veteran.