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Actor Christopher Lee Has Died at 93

Posted by timothy on from the good-guy-bad-guy dept.

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.

10 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. He was much more than that by dargaud · · Score: 5, Informative

    Good summary here. RIP.

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    1. Re:He was much more than that by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Informative
      For those who don't want to follow the link:

      Sir Christopher Lee:

      He was Dracula
      He was a Bond Villain.
      He was Sherlock _and_ Mycroft Holmes.
      He was Death.
      He was Lucifer.
      He was Count Dooku.
      He was Saruman.
      He was Lord Summerisle.
      He recorded a heavy metal concept album about Charlemagne.
      He hunted Nazis during WWII.
      He was part of a secret agent unit called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
      When told be Peter Jackson to imagine how a man being stabbed in the back sounds, he told him he didn't have to imagine it.
      He's fluent in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish; "moderately proficient" in Swedish, Russian, and Greek; and "conversational" in Mandarin.Chinese.

      Now, let's see Check Norris top that.

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    2. Re:He was much more than that by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Considering what a bad ass he was during world war 2, I'll let him decide what is a proper job for a man.

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    3. Re:He was much more than that by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    4. Re:He was much more than that by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  2. What a long and storied career by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not many actors get to span good chunks of two centuries, with great roles in each.

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  3. Loved him in Three Musketeers by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Informative

    1973 version. See it if you haven't!

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  4. He died on Sunday by DrXym · · Score: 5, Funny

    They just waited 3 days to be absolutely certain before announcing it.

  5. Meeting him by andrewa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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... :-)

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  6. Who's gonna play Saruman now by krkhan · · Score: 5, Funny

    In the upcoming 18-movie adaptation of The Silmarillion?