Alec Guinness: Our Imaginations Are Our Souls

 

Interview with Alec Guinness

Conducted by James Grissom

Via Telephone

1991

I thought I was escaping my life because it was so unsatisfactory, and, as I guess we all do, I thought I was alone in this imaginative pursuit--that only I looked about and fancied play-acting and wondering how things might be different, could be different, if only I wished them so, or behaved in a way that made me a different person.

I've brought that sense of play to everything I've ever done, and I don't really care to know what it means, or what it portends, or particularly what it covers up. We can know too much, I think.

So much within my imagination I accept by faith: I assume a lot about things. I jump assuming that I'll be safe. I have always been safe within my imagination, and that is really the only state in which I find myself able to jump.

I think we are losing that capacity to play. The analysis and overthinking of things has come to dominate acting and all the arts, and I don't want to see the scaffolding of the beautiful building. I am content not seeing where the plumbing has been laid out. I have not enjoyed working with actors who need to nail everything down, find the source, exhaust the full biography of the character. I am going to die not knowing everything about me, for heaven's sake, why must I know every single thing about the character I'm playing? All relationships are full only due to what we bring to them through our imagination, and that is on and off the stage.

I think, and I am not at all claiming to be expert, that our imaginations are our souls, and that is where we find our salvation.

© 2020  James Grissom

Photo: Lord Snowdon, 1979