Alec Guinness, who died on Aug. 5 at 86, was perhaps the greatest example of a character actor in our century. His tour-de-force performance as all eight members of an aristocratic family in “Kind Hearts and Coronets” set the tone of a shape-shifting 60-year career that would bring him a knighthood, two Oscars, a Tony and–for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi–an unexpected fortune as the recipient of 2.25 percent of the grosses of “Star Wars.” (“I shrivel every time it is mentioned,” he wrote of his aversion to “Star Wars” mania.) While critics and audiences gasped at the virtuosity that enabled him to play the swaggering, bully-boy Scottish soldier in “Tunes of Glory” as convincingly as he played the hilarious, big-toothed assassin in “The Ladykillers,” the modest Guinness explained his versa-tility with characteristic diffidence. “One hates,” he said, “to let oneself get into a rut.”
Of the late, great quartet of classical British actors–Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Guinness–he was the youngest and most elusive. Where his older colleagues project out on screen, imprinting their distinct personalities upon the viewer, the more reticent Guinness forces us to come to him, his minimalist esthetic perfectly suited to the camera’s intimate eye. Whether playing mad (the deluded colonel in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”) or meek (the larcenous bank clerk in “The Lavender Hill Mob”), Guinness removed the rhetorical flourish from British acting: he made it life-size.
In his memoir “Blessings in Disguise,” Sir Alec revealed that he had been born an illegitimate child, his nomadic childhood spent moving from lodging to lodging with his mother, dodging unpaid bills. No one knew what made this private, enigmatic man tick. “He was a dark horse,” said Olivier, “and a deep one.” But the very fact that you couldn’t pin down his identity guaranteed his longevity. He never left us sated, for who can tire of an actor who never repeats himself? Alec Guinness gave us everything, and we could never get enough of him.
