Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee (May 27 1922 — June 7 2015) was an English actor, author, and singer - he played the role of the wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson's films.
Sir Christopher was born on May 27 in Belgravia, Westminster, England, the son of the Contessa Estelle Marie and Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee of the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps. Lee's mother was a famous Edwardian beauty who was painted by Sir John Lavery, as well as Oswald Birley and Olive Snell, and was sculpted by Clare F. Sheridan. Lee's maternal great-grandfather had been an Italian political refugee who sought refuge in Australia; his great-grandmother was Australian opera singer Marie Carandini.
His parents separated when he was very young and his mother took Lee and his sister to Switzerland. After enrolling in Miss Fisher's Academy in Wengen, he played his first villainous role as Rumpelstiltskin.
The family returned to London where Christopher attended Wagner's private school. His mother then married Harcourt "Ingle" Rose, a banker and uncle of the James Bond author Ian Fleming. Lee applied unsuccessfully for a scholarship to Eton although the interview was to prove portentous because of the presence of the noted ghost story author M. R. James. Lee later claimed in his autobiography that James had cut a very impressive figure; sixty years later Lee played the part of M.R. James for the BBC.Instead, Lee attended Wellington College where he won scholarships in classics. Lee witnessed the execution of Eugen Weidmann, the last person to be publicly executed in France, in June 1939. He volunteered to fight for the Finnish forces during the Winter War against the Soviet Union in 1939; however, as Lee admits in his autobiography, he and his fellow British volunteers were in Finland only a fortnight and kept well away from the Russian forces the whole time. He went on to serve in the Royal Air Force and intelligence services during World War II including serving as an Intelligence officer with the Long Range Desert Group. He trained in South Africa as a pilot but eyesight problems forced him to drop out. He eventually ended up in North Africa as Cipher Officer for No. 260 Squadron RAF and was with it through Sicily and Italy. Additionally, he mentioned (including in his audio commentary on the Lord of the Rings DVD) serving in Special Operations Executive, though all details of actions undertaken by members of the SOE are still classified. Lee retired from the RAF after the end of the War with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Christopher Lee was the only person of the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy to have ever actually met J.R.R. Tolkien.[1]
Christopher Lee died on June 7, 2015 at 8:30 A.M. while being treated for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday.[2][3] His wife, Gitte Kroencke, released the news of his death a few days later.[4]
Lee auditioned for the part of Gandalf, but according to an interview with Lawrence French called Sir Christopher Lee on The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Lee stated " Of course I would have loved to play Gandalf, but I don’t think he (Peter Jackson) ever had me in mind for Gandalf, because by that time I was too old. " [5] It is also further stated on Wikipedia, due to his physical limitations, the amount of fighting and horseback riding involved in the role was what prevented Lee from being considered. Playing Saruman was more ideal since it involved less fighting and horseback riding. [6] {Ian McKellen who played Gandalf was 17 years younger than Lee.}
Lee stated " (Peter Jackson) " It is also further stated on Wikipedia, due to his physical limitations, the amount of fighting and horseback riding involved in the role was what prevented Lee from being considered. Playing Saruman was more ideal since it involved less fighting and horseback riding. {Ian McKellen who played Gandalf was 17 years younger than Lee.} Lee was the only actor of The Lord of the Rings who had ever met Tolkien.
who had ever met Tolkien. He is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the worlds tallest actors (6'5").
Lee is said to have had more recorded sword fights than any other actor in history.
After his first role as Dracula, Lee appeared as the vampire in six other Dracula films. He also played 'The Creature' in The Curse of Frankenstein .
. Sir Christopher Lee also played Count Dooku in two of the Star Wars prequel trilogy movies, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith.
Lee was fluent in Italian (his grandfather was Italian) and German. He spoke moderate French.
According to a behind scenes footage found on YouTube, During the filming of his character Saruman's death scene for the The Return of the King , (later put in the Extended Edition) Peter Jackson began to coach him how he (Jackson) wanted Lee to react when Saruman was stabbed in the back by Grima (Brad Dourif). However, Lee interrupted him, reminding him that Lee actually had previously heard the sound a man makes when he is stabbed in the back. Jackson explains in the commentary "He proceeded to talk about a very clandestine part of World War II. He seemed to have expert knowledge on exactly the kind of noise they make." Producer Barry Osborne mentions "He (Lee) was part of the British Secret Service or OSS or whatever they were called." Jackson never pushed the subject and allowed Lee to proceed. Jackson even mentions what he said to Lee and his final thought on his performance "I'm sure you'll do great and he did."[1]
, (later put in the Extended Edition) Peter Jackson began to coach him how he (Jackson) wanted Lee to react when Saruman was stabbed in the back by Grima (Brad Dourif). However, Lee interrupted him, reminding him that Lee actually had previously heard the sound a man makes when he is stabbed in the back. Jackson explains in the commentary "He proceeded to talk about a very clandestine part of World War II. He seemed to have expert knowledge on exactly the kind of noise they make." Producer Barry Osborne mentions "He (Lee) was part of the British Secret Service or OSS or whatever they were called." Jackson never pushed the subject and allowed Lee to proceed. Jackson even mentions what he said to Lee and his final thought on his performance "I'm sure you'll do great and he did."[1] Christopher Lee re-read Lord of the Rings (LOTR) every year.
Lee received the Award BAFTA Fellowship in 2011.
The Carandinis, Lee's maternal ancestors, were given the right to bear the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Cinemareview cites: "Cardinal Consalvi was Papal Secretary of State at the time of Napoleon and is buried at the Rome Pantheon in Rome next to the painter Raphael. His painting, by Lawrence, hangs in Windsor Castle".
Lee was a step-cousin of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond spy novels. He played the villain Scaramanga in the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.
In the Film The House that Dripped Blood Lee, in one clip, is filmed reading a paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings .
Lee, in one clip, is filmed reading a paperback edition of . Reportably he was considered for a part in the movie "The Longest Day" as a RAF officer but didnt get it; ironically Lee had actually served in the RAF during World War II.
The audio edition of The Children of Hurin was narrated by Lee.
incognitobanjo on December 16th, 2017 at 23:06 UTC »
I don't take credit for this:
Christoper Lee's life could constitute dozens of independent TIL posts, he led a truly remarkable life. I'll just copy and paste some facts about him you'll find after a quick google search.
1) He was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007 for most screen credits, having appeared in 244 film and TV movies by that point in his career— at which point he made 14 more movies, with a 15th due later this year (titled Angels in Notting Hill). He also holds the record for the tallest leading actor — he stood 6’ 5” — but also for starring in the “most films with a sword fight” with 17.
2) He mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee descended from the Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
3) He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didn’t do this as research for his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s.
4) At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine.
5) During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but wasn’t allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted.
6) At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are literally still classified, but involved “conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers.” The SOE was more informally called — and I can’t believe this somehow hasn’t been made into a movie yet — The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
7) Lee never said anything specific about his time in the SOE, but he did say this: “I’ve seen many men die right in front of me - so many in fact that I’ve become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won.” By the end of the war he’d received commendations for bravery from the British, Polish, Czech and Yugoslavia governments.
8) Speaking both French and Italian, Lee spent his time after World War II he hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects until he decided to give acting a try at age 25. Yes, all of this happened before Lee was 25 years old.
9) While filming a swordfight with a drunken Errol Flynn during the filming of The Dark Avengers in 1955, Flynn accidentally cut Lee’s hand so badly his finger nearly came off, and permanently injured. Later, Lee cut off Flynn’s wig while Flynn was still wearing it. Flynn stormed off set and refused to come out of his trailer until Lee claimed it was an accident.
10) While best known for his portrayal of Dracula in countless films, he’s also starred as the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster. Of course he’s known as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels, but his other villainous roles include Fu Manchu, Rasputin, Rochefort of The Three Musketeers (whose portrayal was so popular the character now inevitably appears with an eye patch, although it wasn’t in the book — Lee introduced it), Lord Summerisle of The Wicker Man, the James Bond villain Scaramanga, Mephistopheles, and Death himself.
11) Lee was not only related to James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming — they were step-cousins — but Lee was actually one of Fleming’s first choices for the role of Bond, not least because of Lee’s World War II and SOC experiences.
12) He has played Sherlock Holmes, his brother Mycroft Holmes, and also Sir Henry Baskerville of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
13) Tired of playing Dracula and feeling that the movies had gotten sub-par, Lee tried to quit Hammer films, but studio executives guilted him into returning by stressing how many people could be out of work if Lee stopped churning out hits. Lee agreed to star in 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness, he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of the dialogue. (Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through the film.
14) In the ‘50s, Lee was engaged to Henriette von Rosen, daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen. The Count apparently didn’t like Lee, because after hiring private detectives to investigate the actor and demanding references, he also refused to allow his daughter to marry him unless Lee got the blessing of the King of Sweden. Lee got it.
15) Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he ran into him randomly in a pub — and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie.
16) When Lee heard that Hollywood was going to finally make the LotR trilogy into movies, he took a role in the terrible 1997 TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood as a wizard, specifically so he’d have clear evidence of his ability to be a wizard. When he heard Peter Jackson would direct the films, he sent Jackson a personal letter asking to be in the movies along with a picture of him dressed up as a wizard. Unfortunately, Lee’s advanced age and his natural ability to play villains made him an even better choice for Saruman.
17) The story has gone around a lot, but it bears repeating because it is incredible: During his death scene in Return of the King (only included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make. Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what sound they made.
18) Lee was quite interested in the history of public executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.”
19) He’s always been a big metal fan, but he released his first full heavy metal album in 2010 at the age of 88. Titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which won the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. He made a metal Christmas album in 2012. He was the oldest metal performer, and the oldest musician to ever hit the Billboard music charts.
20) In addition to his impossibly prolific film career, Lee was a world champion fencer, an opera singer, spoke six languages, and was a hell of a golfer.
21) He was made a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2009, a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1997, made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2011, earned he British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship in 2011, received the The Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1994, and so many more.
22) Last but not least: Despite everything you’ve heard about the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Christopher Lee was recognized as being the most connected actor in the world in 2008, again by Guinness. He connects to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps, beating Bacon.
Edzell_Blue on December 16th, 2017 at 20:29 UTC »
He had one of the most interesting lives ever.
Neuroticmuffin on December 16th, 2017 at 20:27 UTC »
And also the only lotr actor to be in a lightsaber battle!