Description: Sir Alec Guinness [Alex Guinness de Cuffe] (1914-2000) b. London, England. Alec Guinness was a much loved actor famous for roles such as his Fagin in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948). In the Ealing comedies, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played all eight of the doomed d'Ascoynes, he gave full scope to his playful virtuosity, while The Man in the White Suit (1951) gave him a role of appealing but dangerous innocence. Guinness won an Oscar, a New York Film Critics award and a British Academy award for his performance as the insanely uncompromising Captain Nicholson in David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a theme on which he played variations in Tunes of Glory (1960). Since the 1970s, he was noted for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars series. His most satisfying and complete characterisation in recent years was as George Smiley in the BBC television serialisations of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). Knighted in 1959, he was given a Special Academy Award in 1979 for 'advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances'. He died in 2000.