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On Thursday, reports confirmed that longtime actor Sir Christopher Lee had passed away in London earlier this week at the age of 93.
Lee’s incredible acting career spanned more than six decades, including a modern resurgence thanks to his poor performance as Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings And Hobbit movies. His original fame stemmed largely from the two main, back-to-back monster roles he took on in the late 1950s: Frankenstein’s monster in 1957 and Lord Dracula himself a year later. (He’s also repeated his Dracula a number of times over the years.)
Over the years, he portrayed a Bond villain – he was literally the man with the golden gun in that 1973 film – along with a villainous doctor in gremlins 2Sherlock Holmes, one of the Three Musketeers, and Count Dooku, arguably the best villain in the world Star Wars precursors.
His acting output declined in the ’90s and early ’00s, after which he accumulated a few video game credits, including voicing a character in multiple kingdom hearts games and serves as the narrator in an oft-forgotten CD-ROM version of the Rocky Horror Photo Show. During that time he also pursued a musical career, culminating in the album “symphonic metal”. Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross in 2010. (That album has arguably the most beautiful album cover we’ve ever seen.)
The news was formally announced by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London on Thursday, and Lee’s death on Sunday followed hospitalization for heart failure and other problems.