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Christopher Lee (1922- )

8x10 Color In Person signed portrait as 'Dracula'. Laying in his coffin with Blood dripping from his mouth.

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Was voted no. 31 on a British televised poll "The Greatest Movie Stars Of All Time" above the likes of John Wayne, Michael Caine and Humphrey Bogart.

One of the most prolific actors of all time, he has acted in nearly 220 films, although he later admitted that his film work was not always chosen on quality but often on whether they could support his family. 1955 & 1970 were his peak years of productivity, as Lee starred in 9 films in both years. He has very rarely played a hero, having been a villain in perhaps about 85% of his films.

Has played a staggering amount of Victorian characters. He played Count Dracula 10 times, Dr. Fu Manchu 5 times, Sherlock Holmes 3 times, Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's brother) once, and Sir Henry Baskerville (a friend of Holmes) once. He also appeared in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), a film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among others.

In his role as the title character, The Mummy (1959), in which he co-starred with Peter Cushing, Lee got severely injured in the course of the filming. All that smashing through real glass windows and doors had dislocated his shoulder and had pulled his neck muscles, especially when he had to carry an actress with arms fully extended across a swamp, walking as much as 87 yards, which damaged his shoulders considerably.

In Dracula (1958), Lee in the title role had to drop a woman into a coffin. But when he carried her, she was unexpectedly heavy and in trying to drop her into the coffin, Lee also fell into the coffin along with her.

A distant cousin and frequent golfing partner of Bond creator Ian Fleming, Lee was the author's personal pick for the role of Dr. No (1962) in the first 007 film. The part, of course, went to actor Joseph Wiseman, who was brilliant. However, fans of the literary Bond might want to check out Lee's portrayal of Chinese master criminal Fu Manchu, for an idea of how Ian Fleming himself envisioned Dr. No.

Sustained an injury to his hand while filming a swordfight with a slightly drunk Errol Flynn for The Dark Avenger (1955).

A stunt double performed the stunts and lightsaber fights in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002). Lee's face was imposed on the double's body. Lee mentioned that in the last 40 years he has done more sword fights than any other actor, but "not any more."

Was originally offered the role of Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977). He turned it down and the role eventually went to his good friend Peter Cushing.

Vincent Price and Christopher Lee were born on the same day (27th May) and Peter Cushing was born on the 26th.


Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:

"Peter Cushing and I have made so many horror films," Lee once said, "that people think we live in a cave together." He was kidding, of course, but there's no doubt that this towering, sharpfeatured actor has enjoyed his most memorable screen roles opposite the suave, aristocratic Cushing in such stylish Hammer Films chillers as Curse of Frankenstein (1957, as the monster), Horror of Dracula (1958, as the vampiric Count, the first of many appearances in that role), The Mummy (1959, in the title role), The Gorgon (1964), Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974), not to mention such other spine-tinglers as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959, as Sir Henry Baskerville), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), The Skull (1965), The House That Dripped Blood, Scream and Scream Again (both 1970), The Creeping Flesh (1972), and House of the Long Shadows (1982, teamed with fellow horror veterans Vincent Price and John Carradine).

Lee has, however, done some films on his own-dozens of them, to be exact. His early movies include Hamlet (1948), Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), The Crimson Pirate, Moulin Rouge (both 1952), and Storm Over the Nile (1956). He played Dracula sans Cushing in many films, among them Dracula-Prince of Darkness (1965), Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969), The Scars of Dracula the German-made Count Dracula (both 1970), and the 1976 spoof Dracula and Son He's essayed the classic "yellow peril," Fu Manchu, in five films-EB> (1965), EB> (1966), EB> (1967), EB> (1968), and EB> (1969). And he's the only man to play both Sherlock Holmes (in the 1964 German-made Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace and a British-made miniseries that yielded the 1991 feature films Incident at Victoria Falls and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and brother Mycroft (in 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes).

Among the other titles that stand out on Lee's lengthy roster are Taste of Fear (1961), Rasputin-The Mad Monk (1965, the title role), The Devil's Bride (1967), Julius Caesar (1970), Hannie Caulder (1972), The Wicker Man (1973), The Three Musketeers (1974 and sequels in 1975 and 1989, as Rochefort), The Man With the Golden Gun (also 1974), Airport '77 (1977), Return From Witch Mountain and The Silent Flute (both 1978). He has also demonstrated a flair for comedy, playing a Nazi officer in 1941 (1979), a cycle-riding guru in Serial (1980), and a genetic scientist in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Like John Carradine, to whose career Lee's own bears a striking similarity, he is an actor of the bravura school who's not averse to self-parody. (In 1983's spoofy The Return of Captain Invincible he even sang. And he turned up as a host one week on TV's "Saturday Night Live.") Since the 1980s Lee has also been active in made-for-TV productions.

Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin