Trivia of Christopher Lee

 Trivia of Christopher Lee (27 May 1922 - 7 June 2015)

*He is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee and Countess Estelle Marie.When he was child, he was introduced to Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of Grigori Rasputin, whom Lee was to play many years later (Rasputin : The Mad Monk (1966).)

*He made an uncredited appearance in Laurence Olivier's film version of Hamlet (1948), as a spear carrier (his later co-star and close friend Peter Cushing played Osric). A few years later, he appeared in Gregory Peck's film Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951) as a Spanish captain. He was cast when the director asked him if he could speak Spanish and fence, which he was able to do.Lee appeared uncredited in the American epic Quo Vadis (1951) starred Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr, which was shot in Rome, playing a chariot driver and was injured when he was thrown from it at one point during the shoot.

*Lee had dubbed foreign films into English and other languages including Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953). Sometimes he dubbed all the voices including women's parts. Douglas Fairbanks Jr recalled that Lee could do any kind of accent: "foreign, domestic, North, South, Middle, young, old, everything. He's a great character actor".

*While filming a swordfight with a drunken Errol Flynn during the filming of The Dark Avengers (1955), Flynn accidentally cut Lee’s hand so badly his finger nearly came off, and permanently injured. Later, Lee cut off Flynn’s wig while Flynn was still wearing it. Flynn stormed off set and refused to come out of his trailer until Lee claimed it was an accident.

*He started friendship with Peter Cushing on the set film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957).Their friendship was sparked when Lee stormed into Cushing's dressing room, complaining that "I've got no lines!" Cushing kindly responded, "You're lucky. I've read the script."Later on the set, they would pass the time between shots by exchanging "Looney Tunes" phrases and quickly developed a fast friendship, which lasted until Cushing's death in 1994.

*One of his famous movie was Dracula (1958).He tried to play the character of Dracula according to his theory of "the loneliness of evil". He had developed this theory after reading the original novel. In Lee's view, Dracula feels lonely, and does not actually want to survive. Dracula continues existing, because he feels that he has no choice.On several occasions, Christopher Lee complained about the contact lenses he had to wear for the shock scenes. Not only were they quite painful, but he couldn't see a thing. While running toward the vampire woman for instance, he even ran too far past the camera on the first take.

*Lee was cousins with James Bond creator Ian Fleming, who wanted him to play the OG Bond Villain, Dr. No, in the 1962 film of the same name. "By the time he got around to remembering to tell the producers, they’d already cast someone else [Joseph Wiseman]," Lee recalled. He would later play the villainous Scaramanga in the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), which was in production after Fleming had passed away.

*Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he ran into him randomly in a pub and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie.