Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee CBEwas an English actor, singer, and author. With a career spanning nearly 70 years, Lee initially portrayed villains and became best known for his role as Count Dracula in a sequence of Hammer Horror films. His other film roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogyand The Hobbit film trilogy, and Count Dooku in the final two films of...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth27 May 1922
CityLondon, England
My favourite country is Finland because once you get to a certain point, you can drive for hours without seeing a single person. I love peace and quiet - something I don't get very often.
I don't play long parts. They must be short parts, but they've got to be parts that mean something, that matter, where people will notice when I'm on the screen, and people will remember the character after they've seen the film.
I've always acknowledged my debt to Hammer. I've always said I'm very grateful to them. They gave me this great opportunity, made me a well known face all over the world for which I am profoundly grateful.
I didn't want to be known as a man who only made horror films. I made some - very few.
The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceausescu's rule.
I thought that people should know about the dangers of Satanism, and diabolism does exist - there's no question about it.
As far as I am concerned, Don Quixote is the most metal fictional character that I know. Single handed, he is trying to change the world, regardless of any personal consequences.
I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.
I haven't spent my entire career playing the guy in the bad hat, although I have to say that the bad guy is frequently much more interesting than the good guy.
Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.
The secret to a long marriage in the film industry? Marry someone wonderful, as I did. And always have her come along on location.
Acting as a profession came to me by chance: in 1946, after the war, I was having lunch with my cousin, who was the Italian ambassador, and he asked, 'What are you going to do now you're out of uniform?' I said, 'I'm pretty inventive, and I can imitate people,' and he said, 'Have you thought about being an actor?'
I've been for 10 years trying to make something out of my life as an actor. I've learned a lot but I haven't done much that's worthwhile. So maybe if I make people wonder what I really do look like and make myself unrecognizable, they will be interested and intrigued, which eventually, of course, happened.
There was a gap of seven years between the first and second Dracula movies. In the second one as everybody knows, I didn't speak, because I said I couldn't say the lines.