New York Times Reviews Guinness biography: His wretched childhood scarred him deeply. His mother, a semi-constant drunk and occasional shoplifter and thief, never revealed the identity of his father. Uncertainty and neglect haunted his early years and left him, like Dickens, with an abiding sense of shame about his background. "He was like someone without an outer skin," his wife wrote in a letter after his death. "He bled."
Like many artists, he vacillated between grandiosity and debilitating self-doubt. "I feel I have the seeds of genius in me," he announced to a young friend after reciting a speech from Shakespeare after dinner. He had not yet spoken a line on the stage. At a rehearsal of "Macbeth" in 1966, he raised titters among some inattentive fellow actors by bellowing, "When I was a boy we would have been studying a great actor at work." Yet, toward the end of his life, heaped with honors and acclaim, he could write in a letter, "I sometimes wonder if I have ever acted, and how I dare to ask for a salary."
His film career, from "Great Expectations" to "Star Wars," was blessed with extraordinary luck. At a time when Gielgud, his mentor, had to take any film part that came his way, Guinness, who had appeared in classics like "Oliver Twist," "Kind Hearts and Coronets," and "The Bridge on the River Kwai," could pick and choose. He turned down "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" ("Do you think my varicose veins would show through the fishnet stockings?" he asked a friend) but took on "Star Wars" ("fairy- tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps"). Somewhat to his disgust, the film raised him to new heights of international stardom.
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