First we lost the great Sir John Gielgud, now, with the passing of Sir Alec Guinness, we must memorialize another of the 20th Century's finest actors. My mother-in-law is convinced tragedies such as these come in threes - if so, then I would imagine Peter O'Toole must be feeling a tad anxious these days.. To lose two such important and beloved thespians in such a relatively short period of time may not be terribly surprising, given their advanced ages, but, is never the less a blow to those of us who have been so entertained by these men and their many superb performances.
Sir Alec Guinness had as inauspicious a beginning and as rough a childhood as any character in Dickens's works, many of which Sir Alec himself helped to bring alive on the big screen. An illegitimate child whose barmaid mother was never even quite sure of his father's last name, Guinness went from miserable home life to miserable school life where he was discouraged from participating in student productions. Fortunately, young Alec followed his instincts and within a few years he was giving massive performances in such films as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. The career that followed established Sir Alec as one of the greatest actors of his, or any, generation.
Guinness's strength was his ability to portray an astonishingly wide range of characters, imbuing each with its own truth. Guinness became his characters with a chameleon-like effortlessness that marked his greatness. While not the most prolific film actor of his age, he had a remarkable string of unforgettable roles in some of the finest films ever produced from the early Dickens's adaptations to the Ealing comedies (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lavender Hill Mob, Ladykillers etc,) to blockbusters like Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Passage to India and the original Star Wars trilogy, for which he wisely insisted on receiving a cut of the receipts proving himself to be no slouch in business decisions either. The most surprising thing one finds while researching Sir Alec's career is the relatively few awards he'd won. For a man of his credits, it seems unthinkable that he was only nominated for a handful of Oscars, of which he only won one for his phenomenal performance in Kwai. Considering how many second rate actors have more than one award makes this omission even more disturbing.
Guinness's television work matched the greatness of his film and theater roles. An early performance in 1959's "The Wicked Scheme of Jebal Deeks", an episode of the American anthology series Startime, led to his only Emmy nomination and later work in such
