Alec Guinness was an English actor of stage and screen, his career spanning over sixty years. His best known screen works are his starring roles in several of the Ealing comedies between 1949 and 1957 (most notably as eight members of the same family in Adel verpflichtet (1949), his Oscar-nominated turn as bank clerk turned bullion robber in Einmal Millionär sein (1951), an inventor who never gives up in Der Mann im weißen Anzug (1951), and as one of five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery in Ladykillers (1955)); his six collaborations over 38 years with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Die großen Erwartungen (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in Die Brücke am Kwai (1957), (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence von Arabien (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doktor Schiwago (1965), and Professor Godbole in Reise nach Indien (1984); his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor); and his starring role as George Smiley in the television adaptations of John le Carré's Dame, König, As, Spion (1979) and Agent in eigener Sache (1982).
His gallery of notable characters (both fictional and historical) also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Der Dreckspatz und die Königin (1950), an enterprising rogue in Der Unwiderstehliche (1952), a sleuthing priest in Die seltsamen Wege des Pater Brown (1954), an eccentric London artist in Des Pudels Kern (1958) (for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter), a wayward Scottish army officer in Einst ein Held (1960), the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), King Charles I in Cromwell - Krieg dem König (1970), the title role in Hitler - Die letzten 10 Tage (1973), a blind butler in Eine Leiche zum Dessert (1976), a survivor of the Titanic disaster in Hebt die Titanic (1980), and a return to Dickens' territory (and a final Oscar nomination) as William Dorrit in Klein Dorrit (1987).
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.
