I would say that Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are pretty well-known actors, despite having a much less impressive body of work than Sir Alec.
Virtually everyone is amazingly illiterate about SOMETHING that somebody else would nearly die of embarrassment for NOT knowing.
To point out that to the person who doesnt know your persoanl holy grail “IT” in a snobby fashion is beyond rude and makes a clear leap into asshole territory IMO.
I am certainly not defending an active avoidance of information, but bejezzus , these days there is problably more “real” important information everybody should know than any single person can know, much less cultural and pop “trivia”.
He’s an icon to the younger generation because of Star Wars; he’s an icon to my generation for Kwai. In 50 years, I think he’ll be remembered equally for both roles. I can’t be convinced that he’d be obscure if not for Star Wars. Some people wouldn’t know of him, but most people over 50 would (and there are a lot of us).
Except for Harrison Ford, none of them have done anything memorable, except maybe Carrie Fisher in The Blues Brothers.
James Earl Jones has certainly sunk into obscurity. Peter Cushing, of course, nobody has ever heard of.
Mark Hamill’s Joker remains the best interpretation of the character. Easily better than Ledger’s or Nicholson’s.
I meant the new actors, not the ones with already established careers.
Ennui is french for " Likes anal."
I skipped page 2…
Claim 1 by Claire Beauchamp (post 8, spliced): … given that he [Alec Guiness] was a renowned stage actor of the highest caliber who is now best-remembered by cultural illiterates as that one role.
Misleading: Cultural literates may best remember Alec Guiness in his Star Wars role, if only for the sheer cultural dominance of Lucas’ franchise.
Claim 2 by Clair Beauchamp (post 24): “So yes, I feel justified in calling someone who only knows Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan culturally illiterate.”
Emphasis added. I mostly agree with this. Guiness made a number of movies prior to Star Wars as this thread has shown. Heck, the guy was film’s one box office draw at the time. Still, there are worse epithets. FWIW, I’ve never seen an opera performance and feel little need to rectify that situation.
Slight hijack:
I’m generally inclined to like classic movies, but I found BOTRK to be quite cartoonish. I was highly disappointed by it.
What’s your definition of “new actor”? Harrison Ford’s first role was in 1966 (uncredited, admittedly); his first major role was in American Graffiti in 1973. By contrast, James Earl Jones started his film career in 1964, and got his first big role in 1970 (The Great White Hope).
Sticking just with the “big three” (Ford, Fischer, and Hamill), none of them started out with Star Wars, and while perhaps not memorable, both Hamill and Fischer have had perfectly successful careers (defined as “work a lot in the industry”).
I won’t argue with the fact that Hamill and Fisher have worked steadily, but what I said was that Ford is the only one who’s done anything memorable. He’s A list. Hamill and Fisher are B, at best, and Fisher’s probably just as well known for her books as her acting. And Hamill’s credits are heavily voice work. If not for Star Wars, they’d be even more “obscure” than Alec Guinness.
My definition of “new actor” is Hamill, Ford, and Fisher. (I couldn’t even tell you who starred in the other three movies.) Ford didn’t get big name status (except with Star Wars fans) until Raiders of the Lost Ark. People of a certain age will remember him more for the Clancy movies than for Star Wars.
But we’re straying from the OP. 
What age is that? Eleventy-niner-foxtrot?
If it weren’t for Star Wars, Guinness would be unknown outside the world of British theatre, film and theatre historians and critics, film directors and students, older people and people who love old movies, and that can’t be more than some million people, right? Practically nobody. 
Is his non-Star Wars work mainstream film knowledge? I’m thinking probably not, unfortunately. The bulk of the moviegoing audience these days is under 30, which means nobody born before Star Wars. What portion of that group is culturally literate?
And for the record, there’s no way to call somebody culturally illiterate without being a snob. But since when do we care about that around here?
I’d put Guinness second to Peter Sellers among film actors, but ahead of just about anybody else.
I have no idea.
But I am familiar with certain things in college basketball that are part of the culture now. Things like ‘final four’, Bobby Knight is a jerk, Duke and Kentucky are rivals, Michael Jordan played for UNC, etc.
In the same sense, I would expect a person to be familiar with Bridge on the River Kwai just from having a passing interest and living within our culture. As has been said, it’s not obscure.
Well, there you go. Sellers’ biggest hits were, what, his Pink Panther movies? All of them put together probably got less box office than any one of the first three Star Wars movies, and if Guinness would be as famous (or nearly so) as Sellers without Star Wars, he’d still be reasonably well known, at least among people over 40.
If you asked me to make a list of Guinness’s movies, I’d probably forget to list Star Wars. IMHO it’s almost a cameo appearance, like Marlon Brando in Superman.
Marley, if someone of any age told me they “knew movies”, I’d expect them to know who Alec Guinness is, and not because of Star Wars. You can’t say you know movies if you only know movies made since you started going to movies. It doesn’t make you culturally illiterate though – just not as knowledgeable as others.
I mean the generic “you”, not you personally.
Ok, but one of the remarkable decisions that Lucas made was to cast a big budget production like Star Wars with relative unknowns (barring Alec Guinness). That was a seminal decision: afterwords Hollywood recognized that the special effects can be the stars.
James Earl Jones wasn’t considered a new actor admittedly, but then again he didn’t really appear in Star Wars.
I think I’d back this definition.
It’d better not be the specific me, since I’ve seen almost all the Guinness movies mentioned in this thread.
And incidentally, this is what Sir Alec thought of his renown. From his obit in The Economist (2000) (Don’t bother, sub req)
Shit, if Obi-Wan Bloody Kenobi got 2% I wonder what some of the main characters got.