Word: leaned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...himself, prone to tantrums and small cries of "God, I'm inadequate" and piteous little interviews in which he offers to quit "for the good of the show." Nowadays he is somewhat more assured when shooting begins, but he used to do such a flip that Director Lean sometimes started the camera rolling while Alec thought he was still rehearsing. While building a part, Guinness shuts everything else out of his life. He lives his role all day, dreams it at night. In the grip of an unpleasant character, he will coldly rebuff his friends; in the mood...
...grand theatrical tradition of Maude Adams, Greta Garbo and Paul Muni. And shut up in the passionate reserve is one of the most difficult, complex and enigmatic Englishmen who ever reached for the rouge. "A dark horse," says Sir Laurence Olivier, "a deep one." Director David (Kwai) Lean adds: "Alec is one of the most fantastically knotted-up men I know." And all agree with the actor who called him "the best-kept secret of modern times, a sort of one-man Tibet...
...Sense of Dignity. Alec is almost magically sensitive to people and to atmosphere. Director Lean "never knew anybody with so many antennae out at once. He knows more about you in a minute than most people would in a lifetime." Along with the sensitivity goes a quick, clear intelligence, soundly educated and widely informed, especially in the arts. His overriding passion is his work, but he is also a devoted husband and father. He met his wife Merula, an exactress, when they both played in Noah (1935)-she was a tiger, he a wolf. Son Michael, 16, attends Beaumont College...
...critics almost as strongly as Olivier's Lear, and he did a swingeing good De Guiche in Guthrie's Cyrano. About the same time he considered working in the movies ("On the stage I never seemed to have a chance to wear trousers"), and Director David Lean gave him the role of Herbert Pocket, the young swell in Great Expectations. The next year, in Lean's Oliver Twist, he played a Fagin that made him, for the first time, a favorite with the millions...
...Bridge on the River Kwai. Winner of seven Academy Awards as 1957's best picture by the year's best director (David Lean) with the year's best actor (Alec Guinness)-a magnificent story of the horror and the glory of war (TIME...