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Biography
Early Life
Lee was born in London in 1922, the son of Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps, and the Marchesina Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano, whose grandfather had been an Italian political refugee who had sought refuge in Australia. Lee's mother was a famous Edwardian beauty who was painted by Sir John Lavery, as well as Oswald Birley, Olive Snell and sculpted by Clare Sheridan, a cousin of Winston Churchill.
His parents separated when he was very young and his mother took Christopher and his sister Xandra to Switzerland, where Christopher was enrolled in Miss Fisher's Academy in Wengen and 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 then attended Wellington College, where he won scholarships in classics.
He volunteered to fight for the Finnish forces during the Winter War against the Soviet Union in 1939 - though, as Lee admits in his autobiography, he and his fellow British volunteers were in Finland for 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 during World War II. He trained in South Africa as a pilot but was forced to drop out due to eye problems. He eventually ended up in North Africa as Cipher Officer for No. 260 Squadron RAF and was with them through Sicily and Italy. Additionally, he has mentioned serving in Special Operations Executive in interviews, and claims to know the sound a man makes when you stab him in the back and puncture his lung. Lee retired from the RAF after the end of the War in the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
Career as an Actor
In 1946, Lee gained a seven-year contract with Rank Organisation after discussing his interest in acting with his cousin Nicolò Carandini, the Italian Ambassador, who related to Lee that performance was in his blood as his great grandmother Marie Carandini had been a successful opera singer in Australia, a fact of which Lee was unaware. He made his film debut in Terence Young's Gothic romance, Corridor of Mirrors, in 1948.
Throughout the next decade, Lee made nearly thirty films, playing mostly stock action characters. His first film for Hammer, made in 1956 with his close friend Peter Cushing, was The Curse of Frankenstein, in which he played "The Creature". That led to his first appearance as the infamous Transylvanian count in the 1958 film Dracula (known as Horror of Dracula in the U.S.) Lee would become indelibly associated with the role and with the horror genre, making another six films as Dracula, five of them for Hammer, as well as many other horror films.
Lee has played roles in over 220 films since 1948. He has had many notable television roles, including that of Flay in the BBC television miniseries Gormenghast that was based on Mervyn Peake's novels and Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński in the 2005 CBS film, John Paul the Second.
Honors
In 2001, Christopher Lee was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.
Lee was named 2005's 'most marketable star in the world' in a USA Today newspaper poll, after three of the films he appeared in grossed $640m. [1]
Trivia
Lee as Francisco Scaramanga facing off against James Bond (played by Roger Moore) in The Man with the Golden Gun
Lee is a direct lineal descendent of Charlemagne through his mother's side.
The Carandini family was 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 Pantheon in Rome next to the painter Raphael. His painting, by Lawrence hangs in Windsor Castle."
Lee is a step-cousin of the late Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond spy novels. Fleming offered him the role of the title character in the first official Bond film Dr. No, and Lee enthusiastically accepted, but the producers had already chosen Joseph Wiseman for the part. In 1974, Lee finally got to play a James Bond villain, when he was cast as the deadly assassin Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun. Lee would reprise the latter role some thirty years later when he provided the voice of Scaramanga in the video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.
Lee appeared on the cover of the Wings album Band on the Run along with other people, including Clement Freud.
Lee narrated the Dark Secret EP by Italian power metal band, Rhapsody, appearing in the storyline as the wizard king Iras Algor. We can hear Lee's voice in the newest Rhapsody's album, Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret. He also sings a duet with Fabio Lione on Rhapsody's single, The Magic of the Wizard's Dream.
Lee was a natural choice for the Lord of the Rings movies, where he plays the role of Saruman (although he is known to have vied for the role of Gandalf, which was given to Ian McKellen). Lee had known Tolkien, and makes a habit of reading the novels at least once a year; his knowledge of the trilogy was so broad that he was frequently consulted on-set as a Tolkien advisor.
Lee's great-grandparents formed Australia's first opera company, performing before miners in towns in the outback.
Lee sings on the soundtrack, performing Paul Giovanni's psych folk composition, The Tinker of Rye.
He is fluent in Italian and German and moderately proficient in French. He was the original voice of Thor in the German dubs in the Danish 1986 animated movie Valhalla, and of King Haggard in the 1982 animated adaption of The Last Unicorn. He is the voice of DiZ in the English version of Kingdom Hearts II.
Lee has been married to the Danish model Birgit Kroencke since 1961. They have a daughter named Christina (born 23 November 1963).
He is the uncle of the British actress Harriet Walter.
At six feet five inches, he is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records for "Tallest Leading Actor."
Lee has a Bacon number of 2 at one point - this calculation uses a modification of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
Books by Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee's Treasury of Terror, Pyramid Publications, 1966
Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors, Souvenir Press, 1974
Christopher Lee's Archives of Terror, Warner Books, Volume I, 1975; Volume 2, 1976
Tall, Dark and Gruesome (autobiography), W. H. Allen, 1977 and 1999
Lord of Misrule (autobiography, a revised and expanded edition of Tall Dark and Gruesome), Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2004
Selected films
The Battle of the River Plate (1956)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Dracula (1958)
The Mummy (1959)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
The Oblong Box (1969)
Count Dracula (1970)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Horror Express (1973)
Death Line (1973)
The Wicker Man (1973)
The Three Musketeers (1973)
The Four Musketeers (1974)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
To the Devil...a Daughter (1976)
End of the World (1977)
Airport '77 (1977)
Return from Witch Mountain (1978)
1941 (1979)
Once Upon a Spy (1980)
Serial (1980)
Safari 3000 (1982)
Shaka Zulu (1987)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1988)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991)
Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)
A Feast at Midnight (1995)
Soul Music (1996) (Voice)
Wyrd Sisters (1996) (Voice)
The Stupids (1996)
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Jinnah (2000)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (extended version only) (2004)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Corpse Bride (2005)
Kingdom Hearts II (2006) (video game)
