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 Lee died on Sunday in a London hospital, where he had been
undergoing treatment for respiratory problems, according to his
death certificate.
The London native achieved fame from the late 1950s into the
1970s playing characters including Dracula, Frankenstein's
monster and the Mummy for Hammer Films, and later in his career
made memorable appearances in a series of blockbuster movies.
With his deep, mellifluous voice and ramrod 6-foot 4-inch
(1.93-metre) frame, Lee was the last English-language horror
movie star in a line that traced back to silent era luminary Lon
Chaney and included Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price
and Peter Cushing, Lee's regular Hammer Films co-star.
Lee brought to his monsters a sense of pitifulness that he
called "the loneliness of evil." Despite being a master of the
horror genre, Lee did not even like the word.
"It implies something nauseating, revolting, disgusting - which
one sees too often these days. I prefer the word 'fantasy,'" he
told the New York Times in 2002.
Many leading directors sought out Lee's talents, especially in
the latter stages of his career when he was already elderly.
Celebrities and politicians took to Twitter to hail Lee.
British Prime Minister David Cameron called the actor "a titan
of (the) golden age of cinema." London Mayor Boris Johnson
called Lee "one of the greatest British actors and a master of
the macabre."
Roger Moore, who played James Bond in "The Man with the Golden
Gun" (1974) in which Lee was the villain Scaramanga, offered
condolences to the actor's wife of 54 years, the former Danish
model Birgit Kroncke, their daughter Christina and her husband,
Juan Francisco Aneiros Rodriguez.
"It's terrible when you lose an old friend, and Christopher Lee
was one of my oldest," Moore said. "We first met in 1948."
Director Tim Burton, who worked with Lee on five movies, called
him "the last of his kind" and "a true legend."
CAREER RENAISSANCE IN OLD AGE
Lee won new generations of fans after the turn of the century in
some of the biggest moneymakers in film history. He played the
evil Count Dooku, fighting Jedi knights in "Star Wars: Episode
II - Attack of the Clones" (2002) and "Star Wars: Episode III -
Revenge of the Sith" (2005).
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Lee was also the fiendish criminal genius Fu Manchu in five films,
Scaramanga in the Bond film and, in a rare departure from cinematic
wickedness, gave life to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in
a couple of movies.
He portrayed the power-hungry wizard Saruman in Peter Jackson's "The
Lord of the Rings" trilogy in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and in "The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (2012) and "The Hobbit: The Battle of
the Five Armies" (2014).
As part of his late-career flourish, he also appeared in Martin
Scorsese's "Hugo" (2011) and Burton's black comedy "Dark Shadows"
(2012) with Johnny Depp.
According to movie industry website IMDb, Lee has a lead role in the
as-yet unreleased "Angels in Notting Hill" and was to have appeared
in "The 11th", which has not yet gone into production.
He also had a lifelong interest in music. His single "Jingle Hell"
in 2013 entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 22, making him the
oldest living artist to enter the charts.
Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was born on May 27, 1922 and took up
acting on the suggestion of a cousin after serving in Britain's
Royal Air Force in World War Two.
He made his film debut in 1947, launching a career that eventually
spanned more than 200 movies.
Lee was most closely associated with the role of Dracula, dispensing
with the nobility Lugosi had given the role and adopting a more
beastly, lustful bearing as he dispatched various buxom victims.
He played the bloodthirsty vampire in movies including "Dracula"
(1958), "Dracula: Prince of Darkness" (1966), "Dracula Has Risen
from the Grave" (1968), "Count Dracula" (1970), "Taste the Blood of
Dracula" (1970), "Scars of Dracula" (1970), "Dracula A.D. 1972"
(1972), "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1973) and "Dracula and Son"
(1976).
(Additional reporting by Stephen Addison in London; Editing by Mark
Heinrich)
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