Alec Guinness

He leaves us not only with an extensive filmography, but with an interesting life, full of anecdotes, through which we see a large number of interesting characters pass through, including: Graham Greene , Ernest Hemingway , Evelyn Waugh , Grace Kelly , James Dean … .

For a recent generation of viewers, Alec Guinness will be remembered for his role as Obi-Wan-Kenobi, the Jedi Master from Star Wars , who taught the ways of the force to a beardless Luke Skywalker, and faced a terrifying Darth Vader. , in a sequence that is already part of the modern mythology of the 20th century. However, for the most seasoned, Alec Guinness is and will be one of those chameleonic actors capable of adapting with conviction and enormous ductility to any character and role, whatever his race, age and even gender. Perhaps for this reason the specialized press has referred to him as the “man without a face” or “the man with a thousand faces.”

Alec Guinness was born in Marylebone, London, on April 2, 1914. His childhood was not easy. As he himself points out in his Memoirss, in his birth certificate “the place destined for my father occupied an intriguing and speculative silence.” Her first years were spent with her mother and her stepfather, their home being the different pensions they passed through, and after which they used to leave different bills and unpaid bills. Guinness, studied at various colleges. His time was distributed between studying and attending various theatrical performances. At the age of 16 he already shows his firm will to become an actor. Alec alternated training as a theater actor, with his work in an advertising agency. His consecration on the scene came when he joined the Old Vic company, under the tutelage of that great star of the English theater that was Sir John Gielgud .

His personal life would settle when he married Merula, from whom he had a son. After a process of personal maturation, not exempt from doubts and ups and downs, Guinness embraced the Catholic faith, to which he would belong with full conviction until his death.

His move into the world of cinema came in 1946 with David Lean ‘s Broken Chains , a director with whom he would begin a close professional collaboration that would materialize in different films, all of which are considered true classics today: Oliver Twist (1948), The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957), where his portrayal of Colonel Nicholson, who leads a group of English prisoners in the construction of a bridge, under the astonished gaze of their Japanese guards, would earn him an Oscar in the category of best actor, Lawrence of Arabia ( 1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Passage to India (1983).

From his extensive cinematography we highlight some of the most significant titles: Eight Death Sentences (1949), a film in which he would come to give life to up to eight different characters, The Quintet of Death (1955) a sample of British black humor, The Swan (1957) where he worked with his friend Grace Kelly, Our Man in Havana (1959) adaptation of one of Graham Greene’s most popular novels, Whiskey and Glory (1960), Cromwell (1970), Brother Sun, Sister Moon . (1971), A corpse for desserts (1976)…

Among his works for television, it is obligatory to mention his collaboration in the series Calderero, soldado, sastre, espia . Only he could give life to Smiley, the efficient and disenchanted agent of the British secret services, defeated in the field of love and tormented by the compulsive infidelities of his wife, Ann his. Created by John Le Carré , in the antipodes of his “glamorous” colleague James Bond, Guinness successfully captured the different complexities of the character’s character.

His work was the subject of various recognitions and awards, and so on February 10, 1959 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England. In 1980 the Academy awarded him the Oscar because it rewarded a lifetime dedicated to cinema.