Sir Alec Guinness summary

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Sir Alec Guinness, (born April 2, 1914, London, Eng.—died Aug. 5, 2000, Midhurst, West Sussex), British actor. He made his stage debut in 1934. His reputation soared after 1936, when he joined the Old Vic company and starred in plays by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and Anton Chekhov. A versatile actor, he won the praise of New York critics and audiences in Shakespearean roles and in T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (1946). His many films include comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Captain’s Paradise (1953), and Our Man in Havana (1959) as well as dramas such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, Academy Award) and Tunes of Glory (1960). He won a new generation of fans in three Star Wars films (1977, 1980, 1983).

Academy Award Summary

Academy Award, any of a number of awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., to recognize achievement in the film industry. The awards were first presented in 1929, and winners receive a gold-plated statuette commonly

acting Summary

Acting, the performing art in which movement, gesture, and intonation are used to realize a fictional character for the stage, for motion pictures, or for television. (Read Lee Strasberg’s 1959 Britannica essay on acting.) Acting is generally agreed to be a matter less of mimicry, exhibitionism, or

film Summary

Film, series of still photographs on film, projected in rapid succession onto a screen by means of light. Because of the optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision, this gives the illusion of actual, smooth, and continuous movement. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film