Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was an English actor, singer and author, who boasted a record-breaking career spanning nearly 70 years.

He was particularly noted for his roles as the ultimate villain, including: Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974); Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003), and The Hobbit film trilogy (2012-2014); and, Count Dooku in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005). Arguably his best roles were that of Count Dracula and Frankenstein along side Peter Cushing, during his stint as a Hammer Horror superstar.

In 2007, Lee was awarded the Guinness world record for most screen credits for a living actor after being acknowledged to have appeared in an incredible 244 film and TV movies.

Perhaps his most defining trait, was his deep, hypnotic, operatic bass voice, accentuating his fluent English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, and less fluent Swedish, Russian and Greek. Unmistakable to the ear, his anomalous articulation inspired voice-over work in a considerable number of film, TV, and video game characters. Coupled with his love of heavy metal music, he was inspired to perform and record music with several bands, including Rhapsody of Fire and Manowar. Since releasing his first solo metal album, ‘Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross in 2010’, Lee produced several award winning recordings attributing to becoming the oldest living performer to ever enter the music charts, at 91 years and 6 months.

In the immortal words of a true legend of the entertainment world:

“To be a legend, you’ve either got to be dead or excessively old!”
Christopher Lee.