Alec Guinness





Alec Guinness

Author profile


born
in The United Kingdom
April 02, 1914

died
August 05, 2002

gender
male

About this author


Average rating: 3.81 · 504 ratings · 88 reviews · 12 distinct works · Similar authors
My Name Escapes Me: The Dia...
by
3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 215 ratings8 editions
Blessings in Disguise
3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 avg rating — 129 ratings — published 1985 — 10 editions
A Positively Final Appearance
3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 avg rating — 69 ratings — published 1999 — 6 editions
A Commonplace Book
by
3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 8 ratings
Das Glück Hinter Der Maske...
5.0 of 5 stars 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1988
Monsignor Quixote
3.0 of 5 stars 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1988
Mémoires
0.0 of 5 stars 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
T.S. Eliot Reads: The Waste...
4.39 of 5 stars 4.39 avg rating — 176 ratings — published 1986 — 4 editions
The Mammoth Book of Modern ...
by
3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 avg rating — 95 ratings — published 2007 — 3 editions
King Lear
by
3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 avg rating — 82,288 ratings — published 2005 — 494 editions
More books by Alec Guinness…
“A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. 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. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.

'I would love you to do something for me,' I said.

'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously.

'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said.

'Anything, sir, anything!'

'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?'

He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.”
Alec Guinness, A Positively Final Appearance