Alec Guinness

Guinness himself believed that his father was a Scottish banker, Andrew Geddes (1861–1928), who paid for Guinness's boarding-school education at Pembroke Lodge, in Southborne, and Roborough, in Eastbourne.

Geddes occasionally visited Guinness and his mother, posing as an uncle.

Guinness's mother later had a three-year marriage to a Scottish army captain named Stiven, whose behaviour was often erratic or even violent.

Guinness first worked writing advertising copy.

From 1875, under English law, when the birth of an illegitimate child was registered, the father's name could be entered on the certificate only if he were present and gave his consent.

His mother's maiden name was Agnes Cuff, born on 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield.

On Guinness's birth certificate, his mother's name is given as Agnes de Cuffe; the infant's name (where first names only are placed) is given as Alec Guinness, and there are no details for the father.

The identity of Guinness's father has never been officially confirmed.

Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor.

In the later 1930s, he took classes at the London Theatre Studio.

Guinness began his stage career in 1934.

Two years later, at the age of 22, he played the role of Osric in Hamlet in the West End and joined the Old Vic.

He continued to play Shakespearean roles throughout his career.

He was one of the greatest British actors who, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, made the transition from theatre to films after the Second World War.

Guinness served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the war and commanded a landing craft during the invasion of Sicily and Elba.

During the war he was granted leave to appear in the stage play Flare Path about RAF Bomber Command.

Guinness won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and a Tony Award.

His first job in the theatre was on his 20th birthday (2 April 1934), while he was a student at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, in the play Libel, which opened at the old King's Theatre, Hammersmith, and then transferred to the West End's Playhouse, where his status was raised from a walk-on to understudying two lines, and his salary increased to £1 a week.

He appeared at the New Theatre in 1936 at the age of 22, playing the role of Osric in John Gielgud's successful production of Hamlet.

Also in 1936, Guinness signed on with the Old Vic, where he was cast in a series of classic roles.

In 1937, he played Aumerle in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice under the direction of John Gielgud.

He starred in a 1938 production of Hamlet which won him acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1939, he took over for Michael Redgrave as Charleston in a road-show production of Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock.

At the Old Vic, Guinness worked with many actors and actresses who became his friends and frequent co-stars in the future, including Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Anthony Quayle, and Jack Hawkins.

An early influence was film star Stan Laurel, whom Guinness admired.

Guinness continued playing Shakespearean roles throughout his career.

He also appeared as Romeo in a production of Romeo and Juliet (1939), Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and as Exeter in Henry V in 1937, both opposite Laurence Olivier, and Ferdinand in The Tempest, opposite Gielgud as Prospero.

In 1939, he adapted Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations for the stage, playing Herbert Pocket.

The play was a success.

Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War, initially as a seaman in 1941, before receiving a commission as a temporary Sub-lieutenant on 30 April 1942 and a promotion to Temporary Lieutenant the following year.

Guinness then commanded a Landing Craft Infantry at the Allied invasion of Sicily, and later ferried supplies and agents to the Yugoslav partisans in the eastern Mediterranean theatre.

He collaborated six times with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).

One of its viewers was a young British film editor, David Lean, who later had Guinness reprise his role in Lean's 1946 film adaptation of the play.

After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played eight different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955).

In 1959 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts.

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980 and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.

In 1970, he played Jacob Marley's ghost in Ronald Neame's Scrooge.

He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.

Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.

Guinness was born Alec Guinness de Cuffe at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, in Maida Vale, London.