Alec Guinness

Masterful actor. Love him all the more for telling kids shit about Star Wars. Lol. Bridge on the River Kwai remains one of my all time favorites.

I recently saw him in the excellent late 70s BBC mini-series of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." He was wonderful, except that his voice is so highly trained for the stage that it sounds very "fruity" (not meaning gay, but rather overripe and deliquescent) and so was a bit of a distraction for a character who is supposed to be so low-key. But the acting he did with his face and eyes was incredibly subtle and well done.

He got a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Star Wars.

What a bitch!

Genuine Class.

I see what you did there R5.

He looks so awful as George Smiley, but so classy and dashing as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a must-see.

Not at all, I'm sure.

trye

The Lavender Hill Mob was another great film of his.

Jeremy’s iron, R5?

Dear OP, he didn’t ‘make it big’ in Hollywood.

He was used as a stooge for Grace Kelly in ‘The Swan’ and then he was used to play a Japanese person for Rosalind Russell in ‘A Majority of One’. He played supporting roles in some run of the mill U.S. movies made between 1965 and 1983.

He only gave of his best in his quality British films, and on the English stage and on his recordings of poetry.

If you read the wonderfully detailed 640 page biography (below) you will see that your other assertions are unfounded.

The Man In The White Suit is wonderful too. One of the great Ealing comedies.

Guinness told a rather strange story about meeting James Dean. As I recall, Guinness had a terrible premonition abouth Dean's death and he begged Dean not to travel in his Porsche sports car. Something like that. It sounds nuts and Guinness sounds a bit odd.

Dearest r13: he won the Best Actor Oscar for "Bridge on the River Kwai," which was a huge hit, and then was in some of the biggest hits of the 60s and 70s: "Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago," ""Star Wars."

So yeah, I'd say he hit it big.

As a Hollywood star, his best known roles were supporting.

Actually, his best known role was in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," the top money-making hit of 1958, for which he won [bold]Best Actor[/bold] at the Academy Awards.

You failed to see the plural of role?

Now you're just splitting hairs.

"Our Man In Havana" was murderously funny with a cast led by Guiness: Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, and Burl Ives et al.

It had the advantage of being, very, timely: Castro marched into Havana from the mountains in 1959 as the film was being shot.

[Quote] Now you're just splitting hairs.

Hardly, the Hollywood movie supporting roles for which he's remembered outweight the leading. It may have been different if he'd got to Hollywood earlier, but I doubt it.

I was a 25 year old production assistant on a movie and used to drive this old (sweet but lecherous) actor to and from set. He was Alec's lover when they were young. He told me Alec would pick him up on his motorcycle and they would ride out into the country and make love in the tall grass. (lol) He said, and I quote: "He was very passionate when making love! But all men are very passionate when they're young.!" Then he put his hand on my thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. #METOO!!!!

What was the actor's name?

R16 Those films are British films.

R23 Gossip without names is pointless.

I won't say the name, cuz you could literally figure out who I am with 20 minutes of sleuthing and the internet is scary.

Are you saying the actor in question is still thought of as straight in 2019? It must be someone like Olivier.

R23 This fictitious person you're fantasising about would be long dead by now.

R27 Don't drag Olivier's name into this! The two of them avoided each other.

No, this actor was openly gay his whole life. I wouldn't be outing anyone, i just want to stay anonymous. These guys were lovers in the 1930'. He had amazing stories about Marlyn Monroe, Tennessee Williams, Marlena Detrich, Marlon Brando. the list goes on.

*1930's

R29 "Amazing stories" will amaze the gullible.

While a rational man knows they're lies.

R23 Hermione Gingold?

An old queer actor - unless he had hardly any screen credits - is unlikely to lead to the outing of a former P.A.

Haha. R33.

I know this is a Alec Guiness board, but...

He told me that Marlon Brando like to give and receive oral and that there was a photo of this (which he had never seen but heard about) This is not news anymore. Everyone now knows this and you can google the photo, but at the time, i thought he was full of shit. I didn't believe him. I didn't believe Marlon Brando was gay. Years later, when I saw the photo and all the stories surfaced and Brando's bisexual antics came to light (thanks to the invention of the internet), I realized he was telling me the truth.

Also, he said Marlon had slept with Tennessee and would basically sleep with any man but wouldn't sleep with this actor, which frustrated the hell out him. (This man was not too attractive.)

Charles Laughton. I'm off to research every P.A. on every film set...

Listen to how he emphasises 'long' in the first sentence--

He was wonderful in four movie adaptations of Dickens' novels. His last Oscar nomination was for "Little Dorrit" (1988), a beautiful performance. His theater career spanned 5.5 decades.

It is absolutely untrue that Guinness only did STAR WARS for the money. Of course the money appealed to him, but so did the idea of playing a mentor, a wise older character to Luke Skywalker. He found the whole thing a little silly, but respected and admired George Lucas very much and kept good spirits about the whole thing. It's documented in the JD Rinzler book "The Making of Star Wars."

I can't deny that the STAR WARS phenomenon has become both corporate and tiresome, but one really has to go back to the earliest days and appreciate how charming and magical it was-- and how in need a lot of young parents and their kids were for a modern myth, especially after the collapse of so-called respected institutions (Vietnam, Nixon, so forth).

The OP's picture is from this film which makes strong social point about pollution.

R38 What would this JD Rinzler know about the inner-workings of the mind of a man from a different country, culture, age, philosophy and religion?

Elliot's Magi poem is great.

He wasn't bisexual, he was gay. Back then homosexuality was considered an illness that could be cured. The cure was to get married, have heterosexual sex and have children. Suppress the urge for homosexual sex because it was sinful. When you repressed the urge, you were suppressing sin and being a good, clean Christian.

So he married a woman who loved him and thought she could help cure him of sinful, lustful urges. Of course, we know today that this isn't right, but back then they genuinely believed it. Guinness thought he could be cured, his wife and vicar thought they could help cure him. Homosexuality was seen as being weak, perverted, lustful, sinful, unmanly, diseased and ultimately doomed to hell. Who would want that?

The marriage was a longterm disaster. Guinness grew to hate his wife and refused to have sex with her after their child was born. His wife felt like a failure for being unable to cure him. Too very unhappy people locked together for decades. Imagine what a better life each could have had if they were born 60 years later.

It's very sad to think of how they were both imprisoned by their marriage due to contemporary beliefs.

Guinness does Eliot's 'East Coker' (on Youtube).

He does it in his usual rhapsodic way where the sound of the words are more important than the meaning. And occasionally he gives a word the colouring of an East London Jew.

I read your post, R42, and I feel you are talking more about yourself and your generation.

I'm more disposed to go with thoughts of the biographer linked in R13 because he was closer to the mind of the man from that culture, age, philosophy and religion.

John Gielgud was a lover of Alec's.

Alec was caught cottaging and gave the name of a Dickens character he was playing at the time, Herbert Pocket.

Gielgud was caught cottaging years later but gave his real last name. His career was impacted for years and he was refused a visa to the United States for being an "undesirable."

Very sad times then

John Gielgud was NOT a lover of Alec Guinness.

Gielgud thought the younger man's delivery was louche to the point of non-existent. Gielgud told Guinness to stop attempting Shakespeare.

Guinness was catholic and had a lot of guilt

[quote] I read your post, [R42], and I feel you are talking more about yourself and your generation.

Yes, you are quite right. I am a gay catholic man who married a woman in order to cure myself of homosexuality so that I won't suffer damnation for eternity. I tried to disguise myself and my generation, but you were clever enough to see through me, dammit all.

Guinness was used to bring together some of the sprawling plot lines in this big, miscast, pretty but messy movie.

He paints a portrait of a man subsumed by Soviet ideology but his last scene gives hope that beauty and art can survive in that world.

I loved him in Dr. Zhivago; his chilly voice over was the perfect narration for watching a movie that at times makes you feel like you need coat from the chill. His cold cynicism was the perfect match for Omar Sharif's wide eyed optimism and it's the perfect end that this old commy is looking for his niece as a remembrance to his brother.

R46 Gielgud said Guinness looked and behaved like Gerald du Maurier (Daphne's father).

Too utterly casual onstage to be acting at all.

Guinness wanted his acting to be as small as possible (which is why he played so many 'small' insignificant losers and just may be linked to his TS Eliot-esque acceptance at the futility of human existence and his need to convert to Catholicism with its exotic but reassuring repetitious rituals)

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Olivier felt obliged to give Guinness starring roles at the National.

But Guinness took pleasure at refusing him.

Guinness also took veiled pleasure at being able to speak the eulogy at Olivier's funeral.

On another thread a while ago someone said he would actually ask writers/directors to drop some of his lines. That is a rare actor.

Gielgud and Guinness weren't lovers. Gielgud was a mentor to Guinness, Guinness said that, not only were they not lovers, Gielgud never even made any advances towards him. He had very positive things to say about Gielgud.

R15 That is a strange story about Dean.

I guess Guinness was suffering with culture shock at the time. He'd done two plays on Broadway but hadn't been to the sensual West Coast (I wonder if he met up with Christopher Isherwood or Aldous Leonard Huxley in LA. He was used to the British penny-pinching philistine named John Davis (who also persecuted Dirk Bogarde) so it must have been a shock enjoying the lavish MGM lifestyle (even though he was only playing a comic stooge to Louis Jourdan and Grace).

That anecdote about James Dean was just the first of two times that I suspected Guinness might be gay.

The James Dean story. It's extremely odd. If only Jimmy had listened to Al....

I always find stories about celebrities like the one in OP irritating.

Some kid whose normal life Guinness doesn't know or care about loves the movie and his performance. Be grateful that you did a performance that resonated with someone, you old bastard. Just smile and say thank you, rather than destroying the tiny bit of pleasure that some teenager got from a movie. So many actors think they are great artistes, but forget that the majority of their work is purely commercial and certainly their oversized paychecks reflect the commercial nature of their endeavors.

Honey, you're in movies. In the end, it makes me laugh just a little that he will only be remembered for Obi Wan - THAT is his contribution and legacy. Few will remember Smiley or any of his other great performance. His financial deal for Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi undercuts his petty jibe. Better a fan than a sellout, I'd say. Alec Guinness earned 2.25% off Star Wars. It's on the backs of fans like that teenager that he made most of his money.

[quote]So how much did this brilliant maneuver put into Sir Alec's bank? Thanks, especially, to the re-release of Star Wars in the 90s, Alec Guinness and his estate have earned more than $95 million from Star Wars. Guinness died in 2000, but because of his epic Star Wars deal, his estate has continued to earn millions through royalty checks, licensing and merchandise sales. To put this into perspective: Alec earned more money playing Ob-Wan Kenobi than he had previously earned from his other 40 major film roles… combined, including his Oscar winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Yes, I know, calm down. But, this rant probably belongs in pet peeves thread. I just can't stand ungrateful celebrities.

The Criterion Channel recently added a big collection of Alec Guinness films, some of which I've never seen elsewhere.