Quotes

[on how much he disliked working on Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and his attempts to encourage George Lucas to kill off Obi-Wan Kenobi] And he agreed with me. What I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo.

I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) to me.

Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.

We live in an age of apologies. Apologies, false or true, are expected from the descendants of empire builders, slave owners, persecutors of heretics and from men who, in our eyes, just got it all wrong. So with the age of 85 coming up shortly, I want to make an apology. It appears I must apologize for being male, white and European.

[in 1985 to The Guardian newspaper, on what he intends to do by the end of his life] A kind of little bow, tied on life. And I can see myself drifting off into eternity, or nothing, or whatever it may be, with all sorts of bits of loose string hanging out of my pocket. Why didn't I say this or do that, or why didn't I reconcile myself with someone? Or make sure that someone whom I like was all right in every way, either financially or, I don't know...

[replying to a writer whose script he rejected, who sent him a note saying "We tailored it just for you"] But no one came to take measurements.

I gave my best performances during the war, trying to be an officer and a gentleman.

I prefer full-length camera shots because the body can act better than the face.

I don't know what else I could do but pretend to be an actor.

Once I've done a film, it's finished. I never look at it again.

Getting to the theater on the early side, usually about seven o'clock, changing into a dressing-gown, applying make-up, having a chat for a few minutes with other actors and then, quite unconsciously, beginning to assume another personality which would stay with me (but mostly tucked inside) until curtain down, was all I required of life. I thought it bliss.

An actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.

Personally, I have only one great regret - that I never *dared* enough. If at all.

[To a group of reporters upon winning his Academy Award in 1958]: No doorstop shenanigans for me, boys. I have a nice mantel where I'm going to display it.

[during filming of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)]: Apart from the money, I regret having embarked on the film. I like them well enough, but it's not an acting job, the dialogue - which is lamentable - keeps being changed and only slightly improved, and I find myself old and out of touch with the young.

[on media reports of his income from the Star Wars films]: The Times reports I've made £4.5 million in the past year. Where do they get such nonsense?

[on the performances in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)]: The only really disappointing performance was Anthony Daniels as the robot - fidgety and over-elaborately spoken. Not that any of the cast can stand up to the mechanical things around them.

[while considering doing Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)]: Science fiction - which gives me pause - but it is to be directed by George Lucas, who did American Graffiti (1973), which makes me think I should. Big part. Fairytale rubbish, but could be interesting.

[on his first lunch meeting with George Lucas]: I liked him. The conversation was divided culturally by 8,000 miles and 30 years; but I think we might understand each other if I can get past his intensity.

The stage was my prime interest. I had no ambition to be a film actor, and a screen career seemed unlikely to come my way. I'd done a stage adaption of "Great Expectations" before the war and this had been seen by David Lean and Ronald Neame. I went into the navy during the war, and when I came out they were preparing their film [Great Expectations (1946)]. They remembered my performance on the stage and asked me if I'd go into their film as Herbert Pocket. I'd thought of film as a much greater mystery than the theater and I felt a need to begin in films with a character I knew something about.

[on The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)]: The original script was ridiculous, with elephant charges and girls screaming round in the jungle. When David Lean arrived, with a new screenwriter, it became a very different thing. I saw Nicholson as an effective part, without ever really believing in the character. However, it paid off; it was a huge success and I got an Oscar for it, though I don't think it made an enormous difference in my career.

Essentially I'm a small part actor who's been lucky enough to play leading roles for most of his life.

Flamboyance doesn't suit me. I enjoy being elusive.

I am always ashamed of the slowness of my reading. I think it stems from the fact that when I come across dialogue in a novel, I can't resist treating it as the text of a play and acting it out, with significant pauses and all.

[on Laurence Olivier after the death of the only acting peer of the realm] Olivier made me laugh more as an actor [in eccentric comedy parts] more than anyone else. In my case, I love him in comedy and am not always sure about him in tragedy.

[his diary entry after viewing Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) for the first time] It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warmhearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience.

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.

An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.

[Asked if he was a rich man]: No, not rich. Compared to striking miners and workless actors very rich: compared to successful stockbrokers and businessmen I expect I would be considered nearly poor.

[Asked if Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) had made him a fortune]: Yes, blessed be Star Wars. But two-thirds of that went to the Inland Revenue and a sizable sum on VAT. No complaints. Let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me.

[on Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)]: When it came to me in script form, I was in Hollywood on the last day of another movie and I heard it was a script by George Lucas, well that meant something; you know, American Graffiti (1973), this is a new generation, lovely. And then I opened it and saw it was science fiction and groaned, I thought "oh no, they've got the wrong man." I started to read it and I thought some of the dialogue was rather creaky, but I kept turning the pages, I wanted to know what happened next. Then I met George Lucas, fell for him, I thought he was a man of enormous integrity and bright and interesting, and I found myself involved and thank God I did.

[on winning the Best Actor award for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)] No doorstop shenanigans for me. I'll put the Oscar on my mantel, which I realize makes very dull copy, except that I'll put a mirror on the mantel so that I'll get a view of Oscar's back too.

I can walk through a crowd and nobody would notice at all.

[on Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)] Can't say I'm enjoying the film. New rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper - and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me to keep going until next April.

[on playing Gulley Jimson in The Horse's Mouth (1958)] I try to get inside a character and project him - one of my own private rules of thumb is that I have not got the character until I have mastered exactly how he walks.

[One day, director Ronald Neame found Guinness sulking in his dressing room, refusing to come to the set. According to Neame, Guinness felt he had not been stroked enough and explained] Actors are emotionally 14-year olds. We need to be chastised like children, and we need to be hugged and told we're doing fine work. We are the children who never grow up.

[1987, on being referred to as "the Man of a Thousand Faces"] Oh, that was a publicity stunt which has dogged me all... well not all my life...but for so many years.

My birth certificate registers me as Alec Guinness de Cuffe. My mother at the time was a Miss Agnes Cuffe; my father's name is left an intriguing, speculative blank. When I was five years old my mother married an Army captain, a Scot named David Stiven, and from then until I left preparatory school I was known as Alec Stiven (a name I rather liked, although I hated and dreaded my stepfather).

[1982, on the "Star Wars" movies] They're not really much fun to act in, not when you're put totally in the hands of technicians and asked to sit in a cylinder and imagine explosions. That's only amusing for a time. But the people couldn't have been nicer.

Actually, my boarding school days were very happy. When I was 5, my mother married . . . someone, and they wanted to go off, so I was sort of pushed off to boarding school, but it became the most solid part of my life. There were the same boys, term in and term out, and in fact it was the holidays that were never stable. I never knew in what hotel, in what town, I would find my mother.

I've worked all over the world, often through no conscious decision I was aware of at the time, other than perhaps to visit a place I hadn't been before. Like anyone else, I have to earn my living. Very often, I've accepted work just for the work. Like any actor, I grow very nervous when I'm out of a job. I think every offer is the last one I'll receive.

[describing himself as a boy] A shy child, thoroughly unprepossessing. Not good at sports, not academically inclined, not handsome, not rich, and not likely to improve. One wonders that one was not stoned to death in the street.

Pride played a part in my decision to retire. I don't wish to be seen as I am now when I know there was something better on offer 30 years ago.

I never had any success in Hollywood. I made three movies in Hollywood and they were all flops. The pictures people think of as Hollywood hits, such as Bridge on the River Kwai, were in fact British productions. Peter Ustinov told me that when you work in Hollywood, how they treat you depends on the role you are playing. If you're playing a king, they treat you like royalty. If you're a character actor... In any event, the great movie stars have all been American. Or, if not American - like Greta Garbo or Cary Grant - actors who worked totally within the American film industry.

The character I play in Love Sick. I'm Sigmund Freud. I appear in some of Dudley Moore's fantasies, smoking a very long cigar. But ... the Star Wars pictures. How did I like doing them? I liked the people very much. But, no, they're not really much fun to act in, not when you're put totally in the hands of technicians and asked to sit in a cylinder and imagine explosions. That's only amusing for a time. But the people couldn't have been nicer, of course. I've just finished my role in Return of the Jedi, which is the third in the series.