page_title: Christopher Lee
section_title: Various roles: The Wicker Man and James Bond
hierarchical_section_title: Christopher Lee / Career / Various roles: The Wicker Man and James Bond
caption_attribution_description: English: A screenshot from the film Horror Express (1972); Christopher Lee as Prof. Sir Alexander Saxton and Peter Cushing as Dr. Wells Italiano: Uno screenshot del film Horror Express
context_page_description: Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ 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.
  Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011, and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013. Lee credited three films “for bringing me to the fore” as an actor, A Tale of Two Cities, in which he played the villainous marquis, and two horror films, The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. He considered his best performance to be that of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah, and his best film to be the British cult film The Wicker Man. He frequently appeared opposite his friend Peter Cushing in many horror films, and late in his career had roles in five Tim Burton films.
context_section_description: Like Cushing, Lee also appeared in horror films for other companies during the 20-year period from 1957 to 1977. Other films in which Lee performed include the series of Fu Manchu films made between 1965 and 1969, in which he starred as the villain in heavy oriental make-up; I, Monster (1971), in which he played Jekyll and Hyde; The Creeping Flesh (1972); and his personal favourite, The Wicker Man (1973), in which he played Lord Summerisle. Lee wanted to break free of his image as Dracula and take on more interesting acting roles. He met with screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, and they agreed to work together. Film director Robin Hardy and British Lion head Peter Snell became involved in the project. Shaffer had a series of conversations with Hardy, and the two decided that it would be fun to make a horror film centring on "old religion," in sharp contrast to the popular Hammer films of the day. Shaffer read the David Pinner novel Ritual, in which a devout Christian policeman is called to investigate what appears to be the ritual murder of a young girl in a rural village, and decided that it would serve well as the source material for the project. Shaffer and Lee paid Pinner £15,000 for the rights to the novel, and Schaffer set to work on the screenplay. However, he soon decided that a direct adaptation would not work well, and began to craft a new story, using only the basic outline of the novel. Lee was so keen to get the film made, he gave his services for free, as the budget was so small. He would later refer to the film as the best he had ever made.
  Lee appeared as the on-screen narrator in Jess Franco's Eugenie (1970) as a favour to producer Harry Alan Towers, unaware that it was softcore pornography, as the sex scenes were shot separately.
  I had no idea that was what it was when I agreed to the role. I was told it was about the Marquis de Sade. I flew out to Spain for one day's work playing the part of a narrator. I had to wear a crimson dinner jacket. There were lots of people behind me. They all had their clothes on. There didn't seem to be anything peculiar or strange. A friend said: 'Do you know you are in a film in Old Compton Street?' In those days that was where the mackintosh brigade watched their films. 'Very funny,' I said. So I crept along there heavily disguised in dark glasses and scarf, and found the cinema and there was my name. I was furious! There was a huge row. When I had left Spain that day everyone behind me had taken their clothes off!
  In addition to making films in the United Kingdom, Lee made films in mainland Europe: he appeared in two German films, Count Dracula (1970), where he again played the vampire count, and The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967). Other films in Europe he made include Castle of the Living Dead (1964) and Horror Express (1972). Lee was a producer of the horror film Nothing But the Night (also 1972), in which he also starred. It was the first and last film he ever produced, as he did not enjoy the process.
  Lee appeared as the Comte de Rochefort in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973). He was wounded in his left knee during filming, an injury he still felt many years later. He also appeared in the sequel film The Four Musketeers (1974), which was actually shot at the same time. Although "killed" in the latter film, he reprised the role in The Return of the Musketeers (1989), with his character given token dialogue explaining that his wound in the earlier film's climactic sword fight wasn't fatal.
  After the mid-1970s, Lee eschewed horror roles almost entirely. Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond spy novels and Lee's step-cousin, had offered him the role of the titular antagonist in the first Eon-produced Bond film Dr. No (1962). Lee enthusiastically accepted, but by the time Fleming told the producers, they had already chosen Joseph Wiseman for the role. Lee finally got to play a James Bond villain in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), in which he was cast as the deadly assassin Francisco Scaramanga. Lee said of his performance, "In Fleming's novel he's just a W
caption: Lee and his close friend Peter Cushing in Horror Express (1972)
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