Biography of Alec Guinness:- He started in the field of advertising and soon began to take some courses of dramatic art with the actress Marta Hunt, who discouraged him saying that he did not possess qualities of actor.
At the age of twenty, despite everything and without demoralizing himself, he made his theater debut in the theatrical company of John Gielgud, where he got a “filming” in tables, which in a short time predisposed him to make the leap to one of The most prestigious theater companies in the UK and Europe.
Biography of Alec Guinness
- Born:- 2 April 1914, Maida Vale
- Died:- 5 August 2000, Midhurst, United Kingdom
- Full name:- Alec Guinness de Cuffe
- Height:- 1.78 m
- Books:- Blessings in Disguise, My name escapes me
It was the Old Vic, an almost compulsory school for any British actor. Its repertoire forced to give the best of each one and provided, almost without realizing, a literary culture of first rank. In Old Vic, Guinnes finished polishing like actor
See Also: Biography of Fernando Colunga
In the mid-1940s he began to work in the cinema, without leaving his theatrical activity. Although he had sporadic intervention in 1934, his first film was Broken Chains (1946), directed by David Lean.
It began in this way a collaboration with the actor who would, over time, yield excellent results to both. His role of Dickens’ character, Herbert Pockett, caught the attention of the critic before that actor who made his first weapons in the cinema.
He endorsed the expectations raised with another role inspired by Dickens, Oliver Twist’s Fagin (1948), with David Lean again in the direction.
His personality proved from the outset great versatility. He was able to adapt easily to all kinds of interpretations, from the dramatic to the playful, although many considered his real territory the comedy.
Although Guinness proved well enough his mastery of the genre, it would be dwarfing his figure to say that those were his best performances.
Throughout a fruitful career, the British actor showed on more than one occasion his diversified talent, able to make from an ironic butler to a character of science fiction, always with naturalness.
After starring Eight death sentences (1949), a fine black comedy directed by Robert Hamer, two years later was a notable success with his participation in Gold in bars (1951), by Charles Crichton, in a performance that Was worth the Oscar nomination.
He had to wait a few years for his work to be recognized internationally, thanks to the role offered by David Lean in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), as the English colonel who falls prisoner with his unit in a Japanese camp during World War II .
Rarely has it been seen on the screen a better incarnation of military nuances: from the capacity of suffering to the exemplarity that with its behavior dictates to its men, passing through the relation that of the confrontation turns towards the almost understanding of the Japanese Colonel.
Despite the time and length of the film, the performance of Alec Guinness, which won him the Oscar for Best Actor, remains one of the values of the film.
A year later he returned to be an Academy Award contender, this time as a scriptwriter of a comedy – in which he also acted – entitled Rage Neame’s Un genio anda libre (1958).
His prestige was consolidated during the sixties, especially among film professionals, although he was not a popular actor in the broad sense of the word, due to his discreet behavior, since he assumed the cinema as a job to make a living, Not under other more frivolous or populist perspectives.
In 1962 David Lean offered another brilliant performance in Lawrence of Arabia. Although the film received numerous prizes, none went to Guinness, although it left to the memory the masterful interpretation of the king Faisal, with whom collaborates Colonel Lawrence in its war against the Turks, with which demonstrated that to embody an Arab king was Beyond a good make-up and a suitable wardrobe. Two years later he gave life to the emperor Marcus Aurelius in The fall of the Roman Empire (1964), of Anthony Mann.
As he turned years, he was spacing out his performances and tying the roles at his age. This was demonstrated by the performance of Obi Wan Kenobi in the saga of George Lucas Star Wars (1977), for which he was again nominated for the Academy statuette.
Another of his memorable interventions was in Pasaje a la India (1983), where David Lean-again-made an excellent visual reconstruction of the former British colony. In 1992 Kafka shot of Steven Soderberg, a tape that was below its possibilities.