The British actor Christopher Lee was born in 1922 in London, England, where he and his older sister Xandra were raised by Estelle Marie and Geoffrey Trollope, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Later, while Lee was still a child, his mother married (and later divorced) Harcourt George St.-Croix (nicknamed Ingle), who was a banker. After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the RAF during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organisation in 1947, training as an actor in their "Charm School" and playing a number of bit parts in such films as
Corridor Of Mirrors (1948). He made a brief appearance in Laurence Olivier's
Hamlet (1948), in which his future partner-in-horror Peter Cushing also appeared. Both actors also appeared later in
Moulin Rouge (1952) but did not meet until their horror films together.
Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s but didn't achieve stardom until his association with Hammer Film Productions, which started with
The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957),
Dracula (1958),
The Mummy, (1959), and
The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1959), all co-starring Peter Cushing. Lee continued his role as Dracula in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series,
The Face Of Fu Manchu (1965), and also appeared in a number of films in Europe. With his own production company, Charlemagne Productions, Ltd., Lee made
Nothing But The Night (1972) and
To The Devil A Daughter (1976). By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as
The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970),
The Three Musketeers (1973),
The Four Musketeers (1974), and the James Bond film
The Man With The Golden Gun (1974).
The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970's to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. Lee's career was revitalized in the early 2000's by his appearances in two blockbuster film franchises:
The Lord Of The Rings (as Saruman the White) and
Star Wars (as Count Dooku). In 2001, he was a made a Commander of the Empire in recognition of his contributions to the film and television industries.
