Alec Guinnessis 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 byQueen Elizabeth IIand is forever tied to the legacies of great filmmakers likeDavid Lean,Alexander Mackendrick, andRonald Neame. But to a lot of people, he’s still just the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi inthe original Star Wars trilogy. Once he became Obi-Wan,that shadow loomed over his head for the rest of his life, and Guinness never got over it. For a man who seemed perpetually dissatisfied and unhappy with his life, the idea that his role as a space wizard (that he, in part, took just for the money) mattered more than his lifetime devoted to what he perceived as higher art must have felt like no less than a profound insult.
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
A farm boy from a desert planet becomes an unlikely hero in the fight against the oppressive Galactic Empire. Guided by a former Jedi Knight and alongside a rebellious princess, a smuggler, and his co-pilot, he embarks on a mission to destroy the Death Star, a massive space station capable of annihilating entire planets. As he learns about the mystical Force, he discovers his destiny and the true strength within himself.
How Did Alec Guinness Get Involved in ‘Star Wars’?
Alec Guinness has shared in interviewsthat when his agent sent him the script forStar 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.Star WarsdirectorGeorge Lucaswould later give him an extra 0.25% of the gross when the film became a huge hit out of gratefulness to Alec. By the time the sequels rolled around,Guinness didn’t even really want to do them. “I said yes to a day’s work onStar Wars II,” he wrote in his diaries. “It’s dull rubbishy stuff, but, seeing what I owe to George Lucas, I finally hadn’t had the heart to refuse.” This already sounds like the words of a man who second guessed his involvement inone of the biggest franchises of all time, and we haven’t even reached the point in time where real people lionized him as an actual space guru.
Guinness Didn’t Want the Notoriety From Star Wars’Success
Since it’s well known that he was already throwing shade atStar Warsdialogue and even its characterizations before signing on the dotted line, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise how he would react when millions of people around the world screamed out “actually no, you’re perfect, and you’re my new god, so please come fix all the problems in my actual life.” Guinness was a prolific writer of diaries and letters,and in such entries, he would frequently expound on such complaints ashow none of the dialogue “makes my character clear or even bearable.“Inhis autobiographyA Positively Final Appearance, he stated that “twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having.”
In that same book, he also told a story about a 12-year-old boy coming up to him and telling Alec that he had seenStar Warsaround 100 times; Alec was so mortified by this admission that he essentiallybribed the kid with his autograph and begged him to never watch it again. Above all else, what kept him in check and appreciative of his involvement inStar Warswas, shock of shocks, the money. He shared that he “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.” The man was truly living the actor’s dream life, outside the crushing existential pressure.
Paul Reubens Played These Lesser-Known Star Wars Characters
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Guinness Distanced Himself From ‘Star Wars’ Over Time
All things told, the last thing Alec Guinness would ever have 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. When your life mission is to do what you love in a manner that makes people forget you’re even there, what good does it do you to be etched in stone asone of the few characters youdon’tcare about?
This man won an Oscar for a character study on the line between self-delusion and commitment to duty inBridge on the River Kwai; he recreated the legendary actorAlastair Simflawlessly inThe Ladykillers; he perfected the art of being the ultimate spy as George Smiley inTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy— all roles that speak much more to the type of artist he saw himself asand wanted to be remembered for. The saddest part is that he saw all of this coming; in a 1977 interview, he said that people “are going to read too much into it, it’s simple, simple stuff for all ages.” If only he knew how much worse fandom would get.
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hopeis available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.
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