Alec Guinness had a treasured career that got overshadowed by his involvement in Star Wars, much to his dismay.
The Big Picture Alec Guinness is one of the most renowned actors in the history of the arts -- a true thespian, an Academy Award winner with three other acting nominations and a lifetime achievement award to his name. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and is forever tied to the legacies of great filmmakers like David Lean, Alexander Mackendrick, and Ronald Neame. But to a lot of people, he's still just the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy.
How Guinness Got Involved in Star Wars Guinness has shared in interviews that when his agent sent him the script for Star Wars, he found the dialogue quite "rubbish," but he also found the story so compelling that he had to keep turning the page. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he wouldn't agree to take the role until 20th Century Fox doubled their salary offer to $300,000 and threw in an extra 2% of the backend gross.
The thing that's important to understand about Guinness and how he saw himself as an actor is that, ultimately, he never wanted to be noticed. He prided himself on being the ultimate character actor who was most excellent at "finding a different personality," as he put it in his Washington Post interview.
Why Guinness Distanced Himself Over Time All things told, the last thing Alec Guinness would have ever wanted is to be the poster child for a massive, sci-fi franchise. Being put in the position of having strangers pelt him with letters asking him to fix their marriage and gassing him up as an actual religious genius is an existential circle of purgatory he couldn't have dreamed of.
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