Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ (May 27, 1922 – June 7, 2015) was an English actor, singer and author. With a career spanning nearly seven decades, Lee was well known for portraying 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, Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the Hobbit film trilogy.

Biography
Lee was born in Belgravia, London, England, on May 27, 1922. He and his older sister Xandra were raised by Estelle Marie and Geoffrey Trollope until their divorce in 1926. Trollope was a Lieutenant Colonel who fought in the Boer War and First World War. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George "Ingle" St. Croix, a banker. Lee studied at Wellington College from age 14 to 17. After this, he worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies. In 1941, he enlisted in the RAF during World War II.

After military service, Lee joined the Rank Organisation in 1947. He trained as an actor in their "Charm School". He played many small parts in movies, for example, Corridor of Mirrors. He had a small part in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. Peter Cushing was also in this movie. Lee and Cushing also both acted in Moulin Rouge but did not meet until later when they did horror movies together. They are well known for working together in horror movies.

Lee had many parts in movies and television during the 1950s. He did not become famous until he started working with Hammer Film Productions. With Hammer Films, he acted in The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. All of these movies also starred Cushing. Lee continued his role as "Dracula" in many Hammer sequels during the 1960s and early 1970s. During this time, he acted many times as Fu Manchu. The most notable was in the first of the series The Face of Fu Manchu. He also acted in many movies in Europe. With his own production company, Charlemagne Productions, Ltd., Lee made Nothing But the Night and To the Devil a Daughter. By the mid-1970s, Lee wanted to stop making horror movies. He acted in several mainstream movies, for example The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun.

Because these movies were very well liked, he chose to move to Hollywood in the mid-1970s. He was a busy actor but most of the work he did for movies and television was not very notable. Because of this, he decided moved back to England. Lee's career became very notable again in the early 2000s, with his roles as Saruman the White in The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and Count Dooku in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Lee is the only member of the cast of The Lord of the Rings trilogy who met author J.R.R. Tolkien.

Lee spoke fluent English, Italian, French, Spanish, and German, and was moderately proficient in Swedish, Russian, and Greek. He was the original voice of Thor in the German dubs of the Danish 1986 animated film Valhalla, and of King Haggard in both the English and German dubs of the 1982 animated adaptation of The Last Unicorn.

Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 7 June 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday. His wife delayed the public announcement until 11 June, to break the news to their family.

Following Lee's death, fans, friends, actors, directors and others involved in the film industry publicly gave their personal tributes. The UK Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, called Lee a "titan of the golden age of cinema." He was also honoured by the Academy at the 88th Academy Awards on 28 February 2016 in the annual in Memoriam section.

Animated Films

 * Nutcracker Fantasy (1979) - Uncle Drosselmeyer, Street Singer, Puppeteer, Watch Merchant

Video Game Dubbing

 * Kingdom Hearts II (2006) - DiZ/Ansem the Wise
 * Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (2009) - DiZ