Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was born on May 27, 1922 in Belgravia, Westminster, London, UK. His father Geoffrey T. Lee was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps and his mother Estelle Marie née Carandini di Sarzano was an Italian countess.

 

Christopher Lee does not only have a marvelous career as an actor, spanning over 60 years in the business (and hopefully many more!) he even attended one of Hitler's speeches in 1934, and witnessed the last public execution in France in 1939 where Eugen Weidmann was executed by decapitation.

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​He has starred in more than 270 movies and also ventured into the world of music a couple of times. (He was offered to be trained as an Opera Singer in Sweden, but at the time, he was not able to afford it - but that still did not stop him from listening and singing Operas, especially Wagner ones, which are his favorite and apparently the reason behind his knowledge of the German language, but I'll assume there is more to that).

 

The first movies he starred in used to be "Horror" movies, but he prefers to refer to those as "Fantasy" as those movies were generally not quite as brutal and bloody as modern day horror movies.

 

He recorded with Heavy Metal bands such as Manowar and Rhapsody, and also acted in some of their music videos. He also released his own "symphonic metal" album "Charlemagne - By the Sword and the Cross". (As a matter of fact, Lee's family was also related to Charlemagne, and he still wears the signet ring his grandmother gave him, which bears the emblem of the Holy Roman Empire).

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Some people may remember him as the 3-nippled James Bond-villain Francisco Scaramanga in "The Man with the Golden Gun". (Medically speaking, 3 nipples aren't even that rare, and you who are reading it might even have an extra one here or there - but in the movie they were sort of misplaced).

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A lot of people remember him as "Count Dracula" and "Fu Manchu" but even the new generation of movie-goers knows him through his roles of "Count Dooku" in Star Wars and "Saruman the White" in Lord of the Rings. (Another remarkable fact about Mr. Lee is, that he knew the author of LotR, J.R.R. Tolkien in person - so while they were shooting the Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand, he more than once advised the crew how things should look like, and how it should be done).

 

And if you think that is all, behold. Christopher Lee is not only a fantastic actor and great singer - he can also communicate (and that very well) in several languages, amongst others English, German, Italian and French and has basic knowledge of Russian, Greek, Spanish, Swedish and Danish.

 

 

​He recorded the song "Magic of the Wizard's Dream" together with the Italian metal band Rhapsody in English, German, Italian and French. He played his part in 2 German Edgar Wallace movies in German, and also dubbed 2 animated feature films into German: "The Last Unicorn" and "Walhalla." In his role in Steven Spielberg's movie "1941" he played a German submarine captain and his speaking parts were also in German.

 

Even though he usually plays the part of the Evil in a lot of his movies (which might just be due to his size of 6 ft 4 in), he seems a really nice person and - not to forget - since 2009 he also is a true Knight.

 

May the force be with Sir Christopher Lee for many more years. A true legend.

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