Christopher Lee

British actor knighted as Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee. Born 1922, died 2015

2015: Christopher Lee has died

Died age 93.

2015: from the BBC obituary:

"Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was born on 27 May 1922, in the upmarket Belgravia area of London. Coincidentally, the year of his birth also saw the first screen appearance of the vampire in F W Murnau's silent classic, Nosferatu.

Lee's father was a Colonel in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps while his mother, Contessa Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano, was a noted Edwardian beauty whose image had been painted and sculpted by a number of artists.

His maternal ancestors had been given the right, by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, to bear the arms of the Holy Roman Empire.

He spent part of his childhood in Switzerland, where his mother had taken him following the breakup of his parents' marriage, but later returned to England where he attended Wellington College in Berkshire."

From the UK Telegraph obituary:

"Upstairs at the Bafta building on Piccadilly there is a wall lined with black-and-white stills from David Lean films, mostly from the Forties and Fifties.

As he walks past them, Sir Christopher Lee, the 88-year-old screen legend, takes them in with knowing nods and says, almost under his breath: “And here’s Charles and Trevor and John.” (Laughton, Howard and Mills, for the record). He’s worked with them all; in fact the record books show that Lee has worked with more Hollywood greats and been in more films than any other actor alive, some 350.

When people come up to him and say they have seen him in all his films, he likes to say: “No you haven’t.” Even he hasn’t seen all his films.

...I ask what he has against retirement. “It’s not for me. I hate being idle. As dear Boris used to say, when I die I want to die with my boots on. Which he did. As did Vincent. And Peter.” (He is referring to Karloff, Price and Cushing, of course.) As we talk I notice he cannot bring himself to utter the D-word. Although he was very good as Dracula, it did cast a long shadow over his career. And now, for him, mentioning the count is almost a taboo, as mentioning Macbeth is for other actors. The most he will do is allude to him, when pushed. And he recalls with a shudder that when he was knighted last year the tabloids ran punning headlines such as “Fangs for the honour”."

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Original Page June 2015 | March 2022