Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor, author, and singer.[1] With a career spanning nearly seven decades, Lee was well known for portraying villains, gaining recognition for appearing as Count Dracula in seven Hammer Horror films—ultimately playing the role nine times in total. His other film roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Count Dooku in the Star Wars films Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), and Saruman in both the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014).

Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011, and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013.[2] Lee credited three films “for bringing me to the fore” as an actor, A Tale of Two Cities (1958), in which he played the villainous marquis, and two horror films, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and Dracula (1958).[3] He considered his best performance to be that of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah (1998), and his best film to be the British cult film The Wicker Man (1973).[4][5] He frequently appeared opposite his friend Peter Cushing in horror films, and late in his career had roles in five Tim Burton films.[