Guinness was in a lot of films before...
The Bridge on River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia who btw played with Omar Shariff one of my favorite old actors.
I mean just look at his roles before 1977
https://www.google.com/#safe=active&q=alec+guinness+movies
Versus Harrsion Ford and Mark Hamill
https://www.google.com/#safe=active&q=harrison+ford+movies
https://www.google.com/#safe=active&q=mark+hamil+movies
If anything they got their starts from Star Wars yes... But people like Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing had roles and known. I mean Peter Cushing did the original Dracula in 58' so that's 20 years in film history before Star Wars.
I've always found Guinness's love/hate relationship with SW fascinating. From wikipedia:
Star Wars[edit]
Guinness's role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1977, brought him worldwide recognition by a new generation, as well as Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. In letters to his friends, Guinness described the film as "fairy tale rubbish," but the film's sense of moral good – and the studio's doubling of his initial salary offer – appealed to him, and he signed on.[18] He was one of the few cast members who believed that the film would be a box office hit; he negotiated a deal for 2% of the gross royalties paid to the director, George Lucas, who received one fifth of the box office takings. This made him very wealthy in his later life, and he agreed to take the part of Kenobi on the condition that he would not have to do any publicity to promote the film. Upon his first viewing of the film, Guinness wrote in his diary that "It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."[19]
However, Guinness soon became unhappy with being identified with the part, and expressed dismay at the fan-following that the Star Wars trilogy attracted. In the DVD commentary of the original Star Wars, director George Lucas says that Guinness was not happy with the script re-write in which Obi-Wan is killed. However, Guinness said in a 1999 interview that it was actually his idea to kill off Obi-Wan, persuading Lucas that it would make him a stronger character, and that Lucas agreed to the idea. Guinness stated in the interview, "What I didn't tell Lucas was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." He went on to say that he "shrivelled up" every time Star Wars was mentioned to him.[20]
Although Guinness disliked the fame that followed work he did not esteem,[19] Lucas and fellow cast members Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels and Carrie Fisher have spoken highly of his courtesy and professionalism, both on and off the set. Lucas credited him with inspiring cast and crew to work harder, saying that Guinness contributed significantly to achieving completion of the filming. Guinness was quoted as saying that the royalties he obtained from working on the films gave him "no complaints; let me leave it by saying I can live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to, that I have no debts and I can afford to refuse work that doesn't appeal to me." In his autobiography, Blessings In Disguise, Guinness tells an imaginary interviewer "Blessed be Star Wars", regarding the income it provided.[21]
In the final volume of the book A Positively Final Appearance (1997), Guinness recounts grudgingly giving an autograph to a young fan who claimed to have watched Star Wars over 100 times, on the condition that the boy promise to stop watching the film, because, as Guinness told him, "this is going to be an ill effect on your life." The fan was stunned at first, but later thanked him (though some sources say it went differently). Guinness is quoted as saying: "'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."[22] Guinness grew so tired of modern audiences apparently knowing him only for his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he would throw away the mail he received from Star Wars fans without reading it.[23]
and then you can actually have living collectibles and make your own Star Wars, exactly how you want it
Very good read. I don't blame him for feeling that way about his Star Wars fame. He was very good in The Bridge on the River Kwai.
