All All. Sign In. I admire any actor who would play one so evil. List activity. Alec Guinness. Alec Guinness was an English actor of stage and screen, his career spanning over sixty years. His best known screen works are his starring roles in several of the Ealing comedies between and most notably as eight members of the same family in Kind Hearts and Coronets , his Oscar-nominated turn as bank clerk turned bullion robber in The Lavender Hill Mob , an inventor who never gives up in The Man in the White Suit , and as one of five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery in The Ladykillers ; his six collaborations over 38 years with director David Lean : Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations , Fagin in Oliver Twist , Col.
His gallery of notable characters both fictional and historical also includes Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in The Mudlark , an enterprising rogue in The Promoter , a sleuthing priest in The Detective , an eccentric London artist in The Horse's Mouth for which he was Oscar-nominated as a screenwriter , a wayward Scottish army officer in Tunes of Glory , the ghost of Jacob Marley in Scrooge , King Charles I in Cromwell , the title role in Hitler: The Last Ten Days , a blind butler in Murder by Death , a survivor of the Titanic disaster in Raise the Titanic , and a return to Dickens' territory and a final Oscar nomination as William Dorrit in Little Dorrit In , he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts.
In he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement. Guinness died on 5 August , from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex. Hitler: The Last Ten Days. Bruno Ganz. Actor Director Cinematographer Downfall Bruno Ganz was an acclaimed Swiss actor who was a prominent figure in German language film and television for over fifty years. He is internationally renowned for portraying Adolf Hitler in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall He decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university.
He debuted at the theatre in , and gained a reputation as a reflective, charismatic and technically brilliant stage actor. On stage, Ganz portrayed Dr. In cinema, Ganz became one of the best-known and most acclaimed actors in the German language, collaborating with many of the most respected European actors and directors of his time. He also starred in international features that reached a global audience. His film debut was The Gentleman in the Black Derby Ian McKellen.
He is of Scottish, Northern Irish, and English descent. During his early childhood, his parents moved with Ian and his older sister, Jean, to the mill town of Wigan. He soon developed a fascination with acting and the theatre, which was encouraged by his parents. They would take him to plays, those by William Shakespeare , in particular. The amateur school productions fostered Ian's growing passion for theatre.
