The day I have dreaded for many years has finally come. Sir Christopher Lee, OBE and legendary actor of the 20th and 21st centuries has finally passed due to complications from respiratory and heart failure.
Christopher Lee stands in my eyes as a true Man of the Century. To say that he was prolific is akin to saying water is slippery. He was among the greatest, most popular, and most extraordinary actors and human beings in the public eye, and if you are old enough to read, there's a good chance he was one of the many villains of your favorite childhood films.
Born on May 27th, 1922 in Westminster, London, the son of a British WWI veteran and an Edwardian art model, Lee was descended from a long line of artists and notable English historical figures; his lineage followed as far back as Charlemagne's family. After his parents divorced when he was 4, he went to attend school in Switzerland briefly before his mother married Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, the uncle of Ian Fleming. At the age of 9, he attended an Oxford preparatory school where he began acting in school plays. His poor math grades kept him out of Eton, and he attended Wellington, where he excelled in the Classics, ultimately learning to speak over 5 languages, which later came in handy when dubbing his lines in foreign languages. His step-father went bankrupt in 1939 and he was sent with his sister to live among a number of expatriate aristocrats in France, before returning to London prior to the outbreak of WWII.
When the War started, he volunteered to aid the Finnish in the Winter War of 1939, but didn't see any action and returned to civilian life and work until 1941, when he joined the Royal Air Force following his Army father's death of pneumonia. He moved around in various assignments after a flaw with his vision prevented him from flying. When the North African campaign advanced, Lee was put into the action on numerous missions, even accompanying the Allies into Sicily. He contracted malaria 6 times in this period, but still managed to fight with the Gurkhas in Italy, and the Italian Resistance Movement, before moving to the War Crimes bureau following the war's end. He retired from the RAF in 1946.
Rumors abound that during this time, he may have been a spy and done secret black book operations behind enemy lines, given that he was enrolled in the precursor entities to the SAS. He never commented on these rumors, citing the oath of secrecy he took, but while filming his death scene in The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1999, he corrected Peter Jackson's direction by saying "Peter, I know the sound a man makes when you stab him in the back."
That's right. Christopher Lee was a British Black Ops agent during WWII and stabbed fucking Nazis in the field. Not only was he related to James Bond...HE FUCKING WAS JAMES BOND.
Christopher Lee's driver's license photo.
Whenever he was pressed about his military intelligence, he was known to say: "can you keep a secret? So can I."
Oh, the awesomeness only gets better from here.
Known for his tall (6'5") gaunt frame and sonorous baritone voice, Lee found work at Two Cities Films, where he worked as a stunt man-actor used primarily for his physicality for about 10 years until he fell in with the Hammer Film company, where he began a long working relationship with some of the best horror film actors in the history of film: Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and the man who became his all-time best friend, the venerable Peter Cushing.
That's right. After killing Nazis, Christopher Lee became best working friends with the greatest horror movie icons of the 20th century.
A typical Saturday night at Lee's house, circa 1959-1985.
Beginning with Dracula (1958), he started his iconic career as the ultimate vampire in the first of 7 films, most of which were done under protest concerning his lack of quality lines and the use of pre-sold rights to "blackmail" him into doing them. Despite his misgivings and the fluctuating box office numbers, the films were wildly successful with a new generation of Boomer film geeks, who clamored for more. He parlayed his popularity into another popular series; Sherlock Holmes, which he returned to for a total of 3 times, playing Holmes once, his brother Mycroft, and Henry Baskerville. His relationship with Hammer ended when they stopped producing horror films in 1972.
Fuck Nazis, VAMPIRES MUTHAFUCKA!
In 1973, he branched out of his Hammer past with his all-time favorite role: the tongue-in-cheek, benignly-sinister Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man (the good one, NOT the one with the bees), considered to be in competition with The Third Man for greatest British film of all time. He enjoyed the role so much he did it for free. He then went on to tap his Fleming connections and play Scaramaga in The Man With the Golden Gun in 1974.
"What part of 'Pass the salt, PLEASE' do you not understand?"
The 70s offered him a number of unorthodox opportunities that he often accepted with relish, or rejected with regret. He appeared on the cover of Wings' Band On the Run album in 1973, moved to the US to avoid typecasting in 1977, appeared and drowned in the disaster film Airport '77, and my personal favorite, showed how funny he could be by hosting Saturday Night Live in 1978, where he played up his Dracula pedigree by playing Van Helsing to Dan Ackroyd's Richard Nixon (whom he kills by plunging a stake through his unpublished memoirs). By this time, the Boomer film geeks had grown into adult filmmakers and after rejecting John Carpenter's request for Sam Loomis in Halloween (the role went to Donald Pleasance, and Lee was profusely apologetic to Carpenter afterward, considering it to be his biggest career mistake) he was hired based on the strength of his SNL appearance to play the Nazi naval officer in 1941. He got to show off his singing chops in 1981's The Return of Captain Invincible (you will watch this NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9se8i4ujs), which we'll get back to in a minute. Other film geeks were quick to pick him and his eccentric brand of self-referential humor, none perhaps better than Joe Dante who cast him as a sane mad scientist in Gremlins 2: The New Batch in 1990.
But my personal favorite self-referential piece of work of Lee's was his own parody of his Hammer persona in John Landis' 1996 flop, The Stupids. Here, he played the fictional villain Mr. Sender, the evil mastermind who sets out to steal the world's garbage and mail...at least according to the film's main character, Stanley Stupid. Hearing Sir Christopher say the words "RELEASE THE DRIVE BEE!" is worth the price of admission alone. Dear fucking GOD is this funny:
You will watch this NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphnTkgJLpE
He bopped around playing various types of parts in different genres throughout the 90s--including, if you can believe it, Police Academy 7--but in 1998, he landed the role of which he was most proud: the role of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan in the film Jinnah.
But now we get to the good shit.
Starting in 1999, Lee was asked to play the role of Magneto in Bryan Singer's X-Men. He declined, the role famously went to Sir Ian McKellan, but a little New Zealand upstart named Peter Jackson asked him to play the role of evil wizard Saruman in his little home movie you might have heard of called The Lord of the Rings.
It's not like he needed makeup or wardrobe for the part or anything.
Now, Lee was not only a devout Tolkien fan who read the book once a year every year for decades at this point, he was also the only member of the entire 3,000,000,000,000,000 member cast and crew to have actually MET J.R.R. Tolkien in person years earlier. He was so knowledgeable about the project that he even consulted with the production department on their props and designs. Who the fuck was gonna turn that down?
Lee was an avid fencer thanks to his theater background, and was recorded as having performed the largest number of swordfights on film in history. He famously sported a semi-bent finger courtesy of an inebriated Errol Flynn during his background work in his youth. Perhaps this was the 4,081st reason that George Lucas might have had for asking him to play the part of Count Dooku in the 2nd installment of the not-quite-yet-maligned Star Wars prequel Attack of the Clones. He had turned down the role of Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars (Peter Cushing got the part), so it's only fitting that the universe set him back to correct that mistake by being one of the only goddamn things worth watching the prequels FOR. While a stun double did all of the legwork, Lee did all of his upper-body work on the film where he actually held his own with fucking Yoda.
Tell me this isn't fucking cool. Go ON! SAY IT!! I FUCKIN' DARE YA!!! I DOUBLE DARE YOU MUTHAFUCKA, SAY THIS SHIT AIN'T COOL JUST ONCE!!!!
He reprised the role 3 years later for Revenge of the Sith, where he met a predictable end at the hands of treachery.
Personal note: I don't think this is VFX. I think Lee could actually do this shit.
So once again, geekdom saved and revived the career of one of its most precious resources and re-introduced Christopher Lee to a new generation of fans. Citing his favor of Tim Burton, he went on to star in a number of Burton's films, starting with Sleepy Hollow in 1999, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005, voice work for Corpse Bride, singing alongside Anthony Head (Giles from "Buffy") in Sweeney Todd, narrating the Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland, and being a New England fisherman in Dark Shadows.
By this time, however, age had begun to creep up on Lee, and his appearance became visibly frail. His roles started to diminish in size to allow for a few days work each. While filming The Resident with Hillary Swank in New Mexico in 2009, he injured his back after tripping over some power cables and required surgery to fix it. Still, that didn't stop him from appearing in the sequel to The Wicker Man called The Wicker Tree, albeit as a different character. Now required to use a cane for most of his mobility, his travel options were limited, and when Peter Jackson came calling to reprise Saruman for The Hobbit trilogy in 2012, Jackson thought nothing of rebuilding the Rivendell sets on a London stage and shooting all of his scenes separately from the location shooting; the footage was spliced in later in computer. He completed the trilogy in its entirety and the final installment was released in December 2014.
He even did the voice work for Saruman in the LOTR video games! How fucking cool and dedicated can this guy BE?!!
Oh...but it doesn't end there...did I mention perhaps the coolest fucking thing of all?
War Hero.
British Secret Agent.
Sherlock Holmes.
Dracula.
Bond villain.
Wizard.
Sith Lord.
Opera singer.
But did you know that in addition to all these things....Sir Christopher Lee was also...METAL?
YES. FUCKING. METAL. BITCHES.
This tall, tweedy, genteel representation of British nobility first entered the heavy metal foray in 2005 with singing work on Rhapsody of Fire's album Symphony of Enchanted Lands II; he would appear on many of their subsequent albums.
You thought I was BULLSHITTIN' Didn't ya???!!!
He then went on to collaborate with Manowar on their album Battle Hymns. He released his first completed metal album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross on March 15, 2010. His first time out, and he won the fucking Spirit of Metal Award at the Metal hammer Golden Gods ceremony. In 2012, he released the followup album Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, making him the oldest performer in the genre. And if that doesn't blow your fucking mind well enough, in 2012 and 2013 respectively, he released Christmas cover song albums A Heavy Metal Christmas One and Two, and the single "Jingle Hell", which rose to #18 on the Billboard Chart, making him the oldest performer TO chart.
And if that isn't enough (and it isn't)...
There was one accolade that took far too long to ratchet up on the old resume: Knight of the Realm.
While he had been declared a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for "services to Drama" in 2001, he was finally made a Knight Bachelor on June 13, 2009, leaving those of us who admired him to ask "WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU GUYS SO LONG?!"
Hey bitch, you don't knight Christopher Lee. You give him the sword and HE knights YOU.
Oh, and he climbed Mount Vesuvius successfully three days before it erupted. So you can add "Fucking Volcano Climber" to that list.
Finally...
Lee died on Sunday, June 7th at 8:30am at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after being admitted for heart and respiratory problems shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday in intensive care.
Sir Christopher Lee lived as full a life as any human being I can imagine. Let's see Steve Fucking Jobs or James Goddamn Franco even TRY to accomplish as much. As long as you live, you'll never get even close to the level of sheer, unadulterated, unfiltered awesome that this man accomplished.
I don't care how long this eulogy has gone on and how much reading you had to do. The last of the greatest collection of hip-cat 20th century icons has passed and he STILL fucking deserves more than I can offer.
Rest In Peace Sir Christopher. It was an honor, privilege, and a pleasure to have you here while you were.
Christopher Lee stands in my eyes as a true Man of the Century. To say that he was prolific is akin to saying water is slippery. He was among the greatest, most popular, and most extraordinary actors and human beings in the public eye, and if you are old enough to read, there's a good chance he was one of the many villains of your favorite childhood films.
Born on May 27th, 1922 in Westminster, London, the son of a British WWI veteran and an Edwardian art model, Lee was descended from a long line of artists and notable English historical figures; his lineage followed as far back as Charlemagne's family. After his parents divorced when he was 4, he went to attend school in Switzerland briefly before his mother married Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, the uncle of Ian Fleming. At the age of 9, he attended an Oxford preparatory school where he began acting in school plays. His poor math grades kept him out of Eton, and he attended Wellington, where he excelled in the Classics, ultimately learning to speak over 5 languages, which later came in handy when dubbing his lines in foreign languages. His step-father went bankrupt in 1939 and he was sent with his sister to live among a number of expatriate aristocrats in France, before returning to London prior to the outbreak of WWII.
When the War started, he volunteered to aid the Finnish in the Winter War of 1939, but didn't see any action and returned to civilian life and work until 1941, when he joined the Royal Air Force following his Army father's death of pneumonia. He moved around in various assignments after a flaw with his vision prevented him from flying. When the North African campaign advanced, Lee was put into the action on numerous missions, even accompanying the Allies into Sicily. He contracted malaria 6 times in this period, but still managed to fight with the Gurkhas in Italy, and the Italian Resistance Movement, before moving to the War Crimes bureau following the war's end. He retired from the RAF in 1946.
Rumors abound that during this time, he may have been a spy and done secret black book operations behind enemy lines, given that he was enrolled in the precursor entities to the SAS. He never commented on these rumors, citing the oath of secrecy he took, but while filming his death scene in The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1999, he corrected Peter Jackson's direction by saying "Peter, I know the sound a man makes when you stab him in the back."
That's right. Christopher Lee was a British Black Ops agent during WWII and stabbed fucking Nazis in the field. Not only was he related to James Bond...HE FUCKING WAS JAMES BOND.
Christopher Lee's driver's license photo.
Whenever he was pressed about his military intelligence, he was known to say: "can you keep a secret? So can I."
Oh, the awesomeness only gets better from here.
Known for his tall (6'5") gaunt frame and sonorous baritone voice, Lee found work at Two Cities Films, where he worked as a stunt man-actor used primarily for his physicality for about 10 years until he fell in with the Hammer Film company, where he began a long working relationship with some of the best horror film actors in the history of film: Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and the man who became his all-time best friend, the venerable Peter Cushing.
That's right. After killing Nazis, Christopher Lee became best working friends with the greatest horror movie icons of the 20th century.
A typical Saturday night at Lee's house, circa 1959-1985.
Beginning with Dracula (1958), he started his iconic career as the ultimate vampire in the first of 7 films, most of which were done under protest concerning his lack of quality lines and the use of pre-sold rights to "blackmail" him into doing them. Despite his misgivings and the fluctuating box office numbers, the films were wildly successful with a new generation of Boomer film geeks, who clamored for more. He parlayed his popularity into another popular series; Sherlock Holmes, which he returned to for a total of 3 times, playing Holmes once, his brother Mycroft, and Henry Baskerville. His relationship with Hammer ended when they stopped producing horror films in 1972.
Fuck Nazis, VAMPIRES MUTHAFUCKA!
In 1973, he branched out of his Hammer past with his all-time favorite role: the tongue-in-cheek, benignly-sinister Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man (the good one, NOT the one with the bees), considered to be in competition with The Third Man for greatest British film of all time. He enjoyed the role so much he did it for free. He then went on to tap his Fleming connections and play Scaramaga in The Man With the Golden Gun in 1974.
"What part of 'Pass the salt, PLEASE' do you not understand?"
The 70s offered him a number of unorthodox opportunities that he often accepted with relish, or rejected with regret. He appeared on the cover of Wings' Band On the Run album in 1973, moved to the US to avoid typecasting in 1977, appeared and drowned in the disaster film Airport '77, and my personal favorite, showed how funny he could be by hosting Saturday Night Live in 1978, where he played up his Dracula pedigree by playing Van Helsing to Dan Ackroyd's Richard Nixon (whom he kills by plunging a stake through his unpublished memoirs). By this time, the Boomer film geeks had grown into adult filmmakers and after rejecting John Carpenter's request for Sam Loomis in Halloween (the role went to Donald Pleasance, and Lee was profusely apologetic to Carpenter afterward, considering it to be his biggest career mistake) he was hired based on the strength of his SNL appearance to play the Nazi naval officer in 1941. He got to show off his singing chops in 1981's The Return of Captain Invincible (you will watch this NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9se8i4ujs), which we'll get back to in a minute. Other film geeks were quick to pick him and his eccentric brand of self-referential humor, none perhaps better than Joe Dante who cast him as a sane mad scientist in Gremlins 2: The New Batch in 1990.
But my personal favorite self-referential piece of work of Lee's was his own parody of his Hammer persona in John Landis' 1996 flop, The Stupids. Here, he played the fictional villain Mr. Sender, the evil mastermind who sets out to steal the world's garbage and mail...at least according to the film's main character, Stanley Stupid. Hearing Sir Christopher say the words "RELEASE THE DRIVE BEE!" is worth the price of admission alone. Dear fucking GOD is this funny:
You will watch this NOW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphnTkgJLpE
He bopped around playing various types of parts in different genres throughout the 90s--including, if you can believe it, Police Academy 7--but in 1998, he landed the role of which he was most proud: the role of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan in the film Jinnah.
But now we get to the good shit.
Starting in 1999, Lee was asked to play the role of Magneto in Bryan Singer's X-Men. He declined, the role famously went to Sir Ian McKellan, but a little New Zealand upstart named Peter Jackson asked him to play the role of evil wizard Saruman in his little home movie you might have heard of called The Lord of the Rings.
It's not like he needed makeup or wardrobe for the part or anything.
Now, Lee was not only a devout Tolkien fan who read the book once a year every year for decades at this point, he was also the only member of the entire 3,000,000,000,000,000 member cast and crew to have actually MET J.R.R. Tolkien in person years earlier. He was so knowledgeable about the project that he even consulted with the production department on their props and designs. Who the fuck was gonna turn that down?
Lee was an avid fencer thanks to his theater background, and was recorded as having performed the largest number of swordfights on film in history. He famously sported a semi-bent finger courtesy of an inebriated Errol Flynn during his background work in his youth. Perhaps this was the 4,081st reason that George Lucas might have had for asking him to play the part of Count Dooku in the 2nd installment of the not-quite-yet-maligned Star Wars prequel Attack of the Clones. He had turned down the role of Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars (Peter Cushing got the part), so it's only fitting that the universe set him back to correct that mistake by being one of the only goddamn things worth watching the prequels FOR. While a stun double did all of the legwork, Lee did all of his upper-body work on the film where he actually held his own with fucking Yoda.
Tell me this isn't fucking cool. Go ON! SAY IT!! I FUCKIN' DARE YA!!! I DOUBLE DARE YOU MUTHAFUCKA, SAY THIS SHIT AIN'T COOL JUST ONCE!!!!
He reprised the role 3 years later for Revenge of the Sith, where he met a predictable end at the hands of treachery.
Personal note: I don't think this is VFX. I think Lee could actually do this shit.
So once again, geekdom saved and revived the career of one of its most precious resources and re-introduced Christopher Lee to a new generation of fans. Citing his favor of Tim Burton, he went on to star in a number of Burton's films, starting with Sleepy Hollow in 1999, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005, voice work for Corpse Bride, singing alongside Anthony Head (Giles from "Buffy") in Sweeney Todd, narrating the Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland, and being a New England fisherman in Dark Shadows.
By this time, however, age had begun to creep up on Lee, and his appearance became visibly frail. His roles started to diminish in size to allow for a few days work each. While filming The Resident with Hillary Swank in New Mexico in 2009, he injured his back after tripping over some power cables and required surgery to fix it. Still, that didn't stop him from appearing in the sequel to The Wicker Man called The Wicker Tree, albeit as a different character. Now required to use a cane for most of his mobility, his travel options were limited, and when Peter Jackson came calling to reprise Saruman for The Hobbit trilogy in 2012, Jackson thought nothing of rebuilding the Rivendell sets on a London stage and shooting all of his scenes separately from the location shooting; the footage was spliced in later in computer. He completed the trilogy in its entirety and the final installment was released in December 2014.
He even did the voice work for Saruman in the LOTR video games! How fucking cool and dedicated can this guy BE?!!
Oh...but it doesn't end there...did I mention perhaps the coolest fucking thing of all?
War Hero.
British Secret Agent.
Sherlock Holmes.
Dracula.
Bond villain.
Wizard.
Sith Lord.
Opera singer.
But did you know that in addition to all these things....Sir Christopher Lee was also...METAL?
YES. FUCKING. METAL. BITCHES.
This tall, tweedy, genteel representation of British nobility first entered the heavy metal foray in 2005 with singing work on Rhapsody of Fire's album Symphony of Enchanted Lands II; he would appear on many of their subsequent albums.
You thought I was BULLSHITTIN' Didn't ya???!!!
He then went on to collaborate with Manowar on their album Battle Hymns. He released his first completed metal album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross on March 15, 2010. His first time out, and he won the fucking Spirit of Metal Award at the Metal hammer Golden Gods ceremony. In 2012, he released the followup album Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, making him the oldest performer in the genre. And if that doesn't blow your fucking mind well enough, in 2012 and 2013 respectively, he released Christmas cover song albums A Heavy Metal Christmas One and Two, and the single "Jingle Hell", which rose to #18 on the Billboard Chart, making him the oldest performer TO chart.
And if that isn't enough (and it isn't)...
There was one accolade that took far too long to ratchet up on the old resume: Knight of the Realm.
While he had been declared a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for "services to Drama" in 2001, he was finally made a Knight Bachelor on June 13, 2009, leaving those of us who admired him to ask "WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU GUYS SO LONG?!"
Hey bitch, you don't knight Christopher Lee. You give him the sword and HE knights YOU.
Oh, and he climbed Mount Vesuvius successfully three days before it erupted. So you can add "Fucking Volcano Climber" to that list.
Finally...
Lee died on Sunday, June 7th at 8:30am at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after being admitted for heart and respiratory problems shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday in intensive care.
Sir Christopher Lee lived as full a life as any human being I can imagine. Let's see Steve Fucking Jobs or James Goddamn Franco even TRY to accomplish as much. As long as you live, you'll never get even close to the level of sheer, unadulterated, unfiltered awesome that this man accomplished.
I don't care how long this eulogy has gone on and how much reading you had to do. The last of the greatest collection of hip-cat 20th century icons has passed and he STILL fucking deserves more than I can offer.
Rest In Peace Sir Christopher. It was an honor, privilege, and a pleasure to have you here while you were.
Last edited:
