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Actor Christopher Lee Has Died at 93
Christopher Lee (or Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee) has played his last on-screen villain. The actor and singer died Sunday at the age of 93, reports The Guardian, after a career in which he played very few positive role models, but an astounding number of antagonists in fantasy, Sci-Fi, and horror films; as a young man, Lee played a career-launching Dracula, as well as a James Bond villain, the perfectly unsettling Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, and dozens of other characters (not all of them evil). Into his 80s, still in demand for the creepiness he was so good at projecting, Lee portrayed the fallen-from-grace wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptations, and the evil Count Dooku in George Lucas's Star Wars follow-ons. He was also perhaps the only Knight Bachelor to have released an album of symphonic metal. Even at the time of his death, Lee was involved in film projects, so his legacy will always be immense but incomplete.
Loved his Hammer films growing up, I think he was great as Saruman in LOTR. He had a great career, and a good life, he will be missed.
One of his lesser known singing roles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Sorry for the long quote, but this isn't the wikipedia of a guy who was a "badass," although he did serve honorably and with initiative, as did many other soldiers:
When World War II broke out, Lee volunteered to fight for the Finnish forces during the Winter War in 1939.[33] He and other British volunteers were kept away from actual fighting, but they were issued winter gear and were posted on guard duty a safe distance from the front lines. After a fortnight, they returned home.[34] Lee returned to work at United States Lines and found his work more satisfying, feeling that he was contributing. In early 1940, he joined Beecham's, at first as an office clerk, then as a switchboard operator.[35] When Beecham's moved out of London, he joined the Home Guard.[36] In the winter, his father fell ill with double pneumonia and died on 12 March 1941. Realising that he had no inclination to follow his father into the Army, Lee decided to join up while he still had some choice of service, and volunteered for the Royal Air Force.[37]
Lee reported to RAF Uxbridge for training and was then posted to the Initial Training Wing at Paignton.[38] After passing his exams in Liverpool, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan meant that he travelled on the Reina del Pacifico to South Africa, then to his posting at Hillside, at Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia.[39] Training with de Havilland Tiger Moths, Lee was having his penultimate training session before his first solo flight when he suffered from headaches and blurred vision. The medical officer hesitantly diagnosed a failure of his optic nerve and he was told he would never be allowed to fly again.[40] Lee was devastated and the death of a fellow trainee from Summer Fields only made him more despondent. His appeals were fruitless and he was left with nothing to do.[41] He was moved around to different flying stations, before going to Salisbury in December 1941.[42] He then visited the Mazowe Dam, Marandellas, the Wankie Game Reserve and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. Thinking he should "do something constructive for my keep", he applied to join RAF Intelligence. His superiors praised his initiative and he was seconded into the Rhodesian Police Force and was posted as a warder at Salisbury Prison.[43] He was then promoted to leading aircraftman and moved to Durban in South Africa, before travelling to Suez on the Nieuw Amsterdam.[44]
After "killing time" at RAF Kasfareet near the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal Zone, he resumed intelligence work in the city of Ismaïlia.[45] He was then attached to No. 205 Group RAF before being promoted to pilot officer and attached to No. 260 Squadron RAF as an intelligence officer.[46] As the North African Campaign progressed, the squadron "leapfrogged" between Egyptian airstrips, from RAF El Daba to Maaten Bagush and on to Mersa Matruh. They lent air support to the ground forces and bombed strategic targets. Lee, "broadly speaking, was expected to know everything."[47] The Allied advance continued into Libya, through Tobruk and Benghazi to the Marble Arch and then through El Agheila, Khoms and Tripoli, with the squadron averaging five missions a day.[48] As the advance continued into Tunisia, with the Axis forces digging themselves in at the Mareth Line, Lee was almost killed when the squadron's airfield was bombed.[49] After breaking through the Mareth Line, the squadron made their final base in Kairouan.[50] After the Axis surrender in North Africa in May 1943, the squadron moved to Zuwarah in Libya in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily.[51] They then moved to Malta, and, after its capture by the British Eighth Army, the Sicilian town of Pachino, before making a permanent base in Agnone Bagni.[52] After the Sicilian campaign was over, Lee came down with malaria for the sixth time in under a year. He was flown to a hospital in Carthage for treatment and when he returned, the squadron was restless. Frustrated with a lack of news about the Eastern Front and the Soviet Union in general, and with no
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I met him when I was living in Germany in the '80s. I was buying a CD at Ludwick Becks (München) and this booming voice came from behind me asking if his order (for some opera) had arrived. Turning around and realising who it was and instantly turned into a nine year-old and asked him to autograph the CD I was holding. It was a BBC audio book of LotR, and he proceeded to tell me I'd be better off reading the book... :-)
At least one site begs to differ...
http://www.badassoftheweek.com...
His service records are sealed and Lee doesn't talk much about his service (when pressed on the subject, he reportedly asks his interviewer, "Can you keep a secret?". When they excitedly say yes, he leans in close and says, "So can I."), but we do know that by the time he retired as a Flight Lieutenant in 1945 he'd been personally decorated for battlefield bravery by the Czech, Yugoslavian, English, and Polish governments and was good friends with Josip Broz Tito, so draw your own conclusions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Just had to add this bit from the article...
Lee also belongs to three stuntman unions, does all of his own stunts, once busted his face smashing head-first through an actual plate glass window for a scene, injured himself falling into an open grave while portraying Dracula, and once had his hand slashed open during a drunken sword fight with Errol Flynn.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.