Alec Guinness

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Personal

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Family

British actor from the early '30s, winning an Oscar in 1958 as Best Actor for his role in "Bridge on the River Kwai" and a Tony in 1964 for playing the endearing drunkard Dylan Thomas. His first film success was in "Great Expectations," 1947, leading to world fame and admiration for his inestimable talents. Other films include "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "The Lavender Hill Mob." An illegitimate child, he was registered as Alec Guinness de Cuffe, Cuffe being his mom's maiden name. There was no father named. Having three different names by the time he was 14, he was immersed in identity confusion for some years, living in about 30 different hotels, lodgings and flats until fleeing the unpaid bills for the next "home." In one of those flats while his mom was away, he struck up an unlikely friendship with an addled, old, spooky former dancer-actress who added comfort and a bit of magic to his lonely life. As a youth, Guinness spent two and a half years on active duty in the Royal Navy during the war. A convert to Catholicism and something of a mystic, he came at last to a serenity that shows in his autobiography, "Blessings in Disguise," 1987. A decade later, he published "My Name Escapes Me, The Diary of an Aspiring Actor." Guinness was Knighted in 1959. He had 60 years of devotion from his fans and 62 years of marriage to Merula, the same age as he. On 5 August 2000, the 86-year-old actor, ailing with prostate cancer and coronary thrombosis, died in the cancer ward of the hospital in Midhurst, West Sussex, England, not far from the country home in Hampshire. Link to Wikipedia biography