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CNN Today

Remembering Alec Guinness

Aired August 7, 2000 - 1:27 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: Actors, directors critics all pay tribute today to Sir Alec Guinness. After a six-decade career spanning the dramatic spectrum on stage and in films, Alec Guinness died over the weekend at a hospital in Southern England at the age of 86.

CNN's Walter Rodgers has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "STAR WARS")

ALEC GUINNESS, ACTOR: Hello there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From "Star Wars," to Shakespeare, to Dickens, he was an actor for all seasons and all generations. Alec Guinness' career spanned half a century.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS")

GUINNESS: There was my employer, Lord Escorn (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: In the film "Kind Hearts and Coronets," Guinness played eight different eccentrics, one a woman. But it was his teaming up with director David Lean (ph) that resulted in his greatest tour de force.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LAWRENCE OF ARABIA")

GUINNESS: My father made this war upon the tecks (ph), my father, Mr. Lawrence, not the English.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: From an Arab sheik in "Lawrence of Arabia," to this Cheka (ph) officer in "Dr. Zhivago."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "DR. ZHIVAGO")

GUINNESS: There's something you haven't told me, Tanya, how did you become to be lost?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't remember.

GUINNESS: I don't believe that, you must remember something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: Alec Guinness became all things to all moviegoers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI")

GUINNESS: I can assure you my men will carry on in the way once expects of a British soldier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: As Colonel Nicholson, defiant as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, he won an Oscar in 1958 for "Bridge on the River Kwai," and another special Academy Award in 1980 for numerous memorable performances.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "OLIVER TWIST")

GUINNESS: I only tried to frighten you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: Guinness said, one became an actor to escape from oneself. Friends were more generous.

SIR JOHN MILLS, ACTOR: He will never -- I think -- ever be equaled. I think he was out on his own as a brilliant character actor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUINNESS: Call me Dutch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: His sometimes comic, unassuming presence had the reverse effect of enabling him to dominate a scene or a film though his were not heroic roles. It was as the metaphysical cosmic sage Obi-Wan Kenobi, Guinness came alive for the current generation. It also made him a multimillionaire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "STAR WARS")

"DARTH VADER": Now I am the master.

GUINNESS: Only a master of evil, Darth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: Yet Guinness despised this role, having himself killed off by Darth Vader because he said he did not want to go on speaking, quote, "those bloody, awful, banal lines."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Alec was very quiet, very soft. He let the camera come to him.

RODGERS: Alec Guinness, dead of cancer at 86.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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