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Personal life

Guinness married the artist, playwright and actress Merula Silvia Salaman (1914–2000) in 1938; in 1940, they had a son, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor. From the 1950s the family lived at Kettlebrook Meadows, near Steep Marsh in Hampshire. The house itself was designed by Merula's brother Eusty Salaman. His great-grandson Nesta Guinness-Walker is a professional footballer.

A biography claimed that Guinness was arrested and fined 10 guineas (£10.50) for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Piers Paul Read, who wrote his authorised biography, did not believe it happened. Another biography suggests: "The rumour is possibly a conflation of stories about Alec's ' cottaging ' and the arrest of John Gielgud, in October 1953, in a public lavatory in Chelsea, after dining with the Guinnesses at St. Peter's Square." This suggestion was not made until April 2001, eight months after his death, when a BBC Showbiz article related that new books claimed that Guinness was bisexual, that he had kept his sexuality private from the public eye and that only his closest friends and family members knew about his sexual orientation.

While serving in the Royal Navy, Guinness had planned to become an Anglican priest. In 1954, while he was filming Father Brown in Burgundy, Guinness, who was in costume as a Catholic priest, was mistaken for a real priest by a local child. Guinness was far from fluent in French, and the child apparently did not notice that Guinness did not understand him but took his hand and chattered while the two strolled; the child then waved and trotted off. The confidence and affection the clerical attire appeared to inspire in the boy left a deep impression on the actor. When their son was ill with polio at the age of 11, Guinness began visiting a church to pray. A few years later, in 1956, Guinness converted to the Catholic Church. His wife, who was of paternal Sephardi Jewish descent, followed suit in 1957 while he was in Ceylon filming The Bridge on the River Kwai, and she informed him only after the event.

Guinness told a story in a media interview and wrote in his memoir that he met James Dean and predicted Dean's death one week before he was killed in a car accident in 1955. In interviews shortly after his death, Guinness recalled that all of Dean's friends had issued similar warnings because he drove too fast.

Every morning, Guinness recited verse eight from Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear your loving kindness in the morning".