Alec Guinness famous quotes

03-25-2025

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.
-- Alec Guinness

#Two #Heaven #Acting
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.
-- Alec Guinness

#Personality #Ego #Acting
We live in an age of apologies. Apologies, fake or true, are expected from the descendants of empire builders, slave owners and persecutors of heretics, and from men who -in our eyes- just got it all wrong. So, with the age of 85 coming up shortly, I want to make an apology. It appears I must apologize for being male, white, and European.
-- Alec Guinness

#Eye #Apology #Men
Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.
-- Alec Guinness

#Needs #Thousand #Explanation
I don't know what else I could do but pretend to be an actor.
-- Alec Guinness

#Actors
There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.
-- Alec Guinness

#Done #Wickedness #Littles
Essentially, I'm a small-part actor who's been lucky enough to play leading roles for most of his life.
-- Alec Guinness

#Play #Lucky #Roles
Best performance of the year: Aston Villa v. Milan, September 1994
-- Alec Guinness

#Years #Theatre #Villa
An Actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents...
-- Alec Guinness

#Children #Men #Vanity
The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility.
-- Alec Guinness

#Men #Good Man #Applause
Much of the day I have busied myself making notes on the small parts in Shakespeare, often nameless, which are rewarding to the actor if only he'll not dismiss them as beneath his dignity. If I can work it up into a talk I might call it, 'Only a cough and a spit ' -the phrase so often used by actors to explain away a lack of opportunity.
-- Alec Guinness

#Opportunity #Theatre #Phrases
A superb tenor voice, like a silver trumpet muffled in silk.
-- Alec Guinness

#Voice #Silver #Trumpets
I shrivel up every time someone mentions Star Wars to me.
-- Alec Guinness

#Stars #War
Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.
-- Alec Guinness

#War #Men #Vices
That's no moon. It's a space station
-- Alec Guinness

#Moon #Space
A person who is keen to shake your hand usually has something up his sleeve.
-- Alec Guinness

#Hands #Motive #Sleeves

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