Monday, May 11, 2026

 

Christpher Lee – when fact outweighs fiction

 

A talented actor and a real screen presence, Lee, was perhaps the ultimate screen bad guy. Just one look at his credits show this but there was so much more to this truly remarkable man, a life worthy of one of his films.

 

Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, later Sir Christopher,  was born on 27 May 1922 in Belgravia, London, the son of Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee and his wife, Countess Estelle Marie (née Carandini di Sarzano)

After his parents separation, when he was four, he lived with his mother in Switzerland where he got his first taste of acting.  They later moved to London where his mother married Ian Flemmigs uncle, the banker Harcourt George St-Croix Rose.  While here he was introduced to  Grigori Rasputin’s assassins Prince Yusupav and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. He would later play Rasputin in a film.

 

Another point of interest is while on his way to visit his sister, Lee was in Paris and witnessed there last public execution by guillotine.

 

In 1939, when the war broke out, he volunteered to fight for the Finnish army in their winter war against the Soviet Union, he later joined the Home Guard before transferring to the RAF – it was here that he worked as an intelligence officer and later hunted down Nazis.

 

After the war his acting carer blossomed and he went on to play many roles in TV, film and radio achieving some amazing milestones:

 

Only Lord of the Rings actor to have met Tolkien

He played a Bond villain – and was related by marriage to the author Ian Flemming.

He met Rasputin’s killers and played the mad monk.

He had many famous on screen duals with light sabres, swords, wizards staffs and much more. A real life fencer he is believed to have had the most on screen sword fights and only in his 70’s did he stop doing his own fight scenes.

 

He holds the Guinness World Record for most Screen credits.

In his eighties he recorded what else but a Heavy Metal album.

 

Quite a life, quite a real life bad ass.



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