Sir Alec Guinness, the reluctant genius, passes away

Sir Alec Guinness, the reluctant genius, passes away
REUTERS

August 7: Sir Alec Guinness was a genius of the stage and screen, but very much preferred to keep himself to himself.

The British actor, whose death at the age of 86 was announced on Monday, once said he "bared his soul" each month to a priest, but to no one else.

Despite his reluctance to live in the limelight, his brilliance as an actor with a career spanning more than 60 years was recognised worldwide.

Born in 1914 in London, Guinness was the son of a banker, but his parents separated soon after his birth. He said he could not remember his father at all.

Guinness started down the entertainment path even in his school days, amusing his classmates by acting out stories he invented himself.

His first job was as a copywriter for an advertising agency, but, determined to take to the stage, he studied acting and made his first professional appearance was a walk-on part in "Libel" in 1933.

Three years later he joined the acting company of fellow acting great Sir John Gielgud and in 1938 starred in a modern dress version of Hamlet at London's Old Vic theatre.

Guinness married his wife, the playwright Merula Salaman, in 1938 and spent much of the next five years in service to Britain's Royal Navy during World War Two. The couple had one son, Matthew.

But Guinness managed to squeeze in his New York stage debut while on leave from the Navy with a role in "Flare Path" in 1942.

After returning to the Old Vic in 1946, his jump from stage to screen was made with an adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens novel "Great Expectations" in the same year.

Later, at age of 34, Guinness offered the definitive Fagin in a 1948 adaptation of "Oliver Twist".

Then came a series of Ealing studio comedies, including the internationally acclaimed "Kind Hearts and Coronets" in 1949 in which Guinness displayed his versatility by playing eight different characters.

The actor's first Oscar came for his role as the Colonel in the 1957 war movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai".

A second came in 1980, when he was awarded an honorary Oscar for "advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances".

Among the best of those performances was his depiction of the Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi in the 1977 blockbuster "Star Wars".

But Guinness, who became Sir Alec when he was knighted in 1960, was famous for his humility and refusal to take on the role of a star.

"You can only be your own personality and I am just happy to be an actor," he said. "If I tried to swan around, I wouldn't know how to behave. If I tried to be a superstar, I'd be a laughing stock."

Guinness took that attitude to the extreme in "Star Wars", when he persuaded director George Lucas to write his character out of the film by having him killed off by the vicious Darth Vader.

"I just couldn't go speaking those bloody awful lines," he said of the role. "I'd Had enough of the mumbo jumbo."

He was also characteristically humble about his Oscar-winning performance as the Colonel in "The Bridge on the River Kwai", saying: "I don't look back on it as a great performance."

Guinness loved his acting life well enough to continue his work well into the 1980s, when he starred on British television as John Le Carre's arch spymaster George Smiley, first in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and then in "Smiley's People".

But his love of the simple things in life was also clear.

At an eighty-second birthday celebration in London he said:"My contribution to film as always been negligible".

His idea of Heaven, he once said, was to "sit on the terrace on a summer's evening, enjoy a drink with one or two friends and listen to the silence".