Original subtitles

The following programme contains violent scenes, sexual references,

and explores the theme of racism.

Christopher Lee, tall, handsome, elegant.

Very aristocratic. A little stiff.

Slightly pompous. Imperious.

Stilted, a little un-forthcoming.

He was a powerful individual.

Everyone will always remember him as Dracula

because he was a powerful Dracula.

Consistent aura around him, which was of a certain kind of dignity

and a certain kind of scariness and a certain kind of...

"Ooh, he must be scary to meet," kind of thing.

People when they-sometimes they say, "You always play villains,

you always play the bad guy,"

He said, "No, I play people.

Good and evil is a state of mind. Depends on which side you are on."

He was, I think, soft as putty.

That's what's so interesting about monsters,

that you gotta remember, people forget,

but most monsters are victims.

How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.

How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.

How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.

How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.

How do you do? I'm Christopher Lee.

On the 7th of June in the year 2015,

I passed away at the age of 93.

To some, this might seem like a defining moment,

but not me. Oh, no.

By then I had become quite accustomed to dying.

You might even have called it my stock-in-trade.

'When I was born on the 27th of May, 1922,

'I was a new chapter in the story of the Italian aristocratic

'Carandini family.'

'Records of the House of Carandini stretch back to the 12th century.

'Here, you see our coat of arms awarded to us in the 15th century

'by Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

'Our noble lineage could be traced directly back to Charlemagne.

'But let's not dally with detail.

'For as impressive a list of soldiers, governors,

'senators, and clergymen the Carandini tree may offer up,

'our time is short, and our subject is me.

'Of this mighty family tree, at the time of my birth,

'a sapling had been growing quite admirably in London, for some years.

'My maternal grandfather was the Count Carandini

'and my mother, his only child,

'the Contessa Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano.

'My mother was an Edwardian beauty

'and in her youth, a muse to many.

'She was painted, sketched, sculpted, and etched,

'desired by many, but landed by one.

'Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Lee of the King's Royal Rifle Corps,

'a hero of the Boer War and the Great War,

'survivor of the Somme.'

Quite late on in life, I got a book called, "Il Carandini"

and they looked like a lot of rogues...

...sort of the Mafia of their day.

But you know, to get- the cynical view is that

to keep a title for 700 years or something,

you've got to have killed a lot of people.

'I grew up in the shadow of achievement and nobility.

'And as a child, wondered if I would be able to live up

'to the remarkable lives of those who had preceded me.

'I was, at heart, a wanderer.

'As was my Papa who wandered away from us

'when I was just four-years-old, never to return.'

His mother was very strict, and he had a very uptight upbringing.

You know? So, he was a bit naive in certain-in certain ways.

There I am. I look like quite a normal boy, don't I?

And in many ways I was.

Equally anxious and arrogant, but my childhood was unique.

We were sprung once more into high society when my mother remarried.

My stepfather was a small but exceedingly strong man

known as Ingle. He was a banker and bon viveur.

'To celebrate their union, I was swiftly dispatched to boarding school

'in the hope that they might whip me into shape to be accepted into Eton.

'One could hardly describe me as a star student,

'but the desire to please consumed and overwhelmed me.

'So, it is perhaps no surprise that I was to end up on the school stage.

'Mother, Ingle, and my sister Xandra made the journey

'for the first night of the school production of Henry V.

'And they all excitedly agreed that a bright future in acting

'awaited the proud young boy playing the eponymous lead.

'Sadly, that boy was not me.

'But I loved the stage and I was an obstinate little so-and-so.'

Perhaps my time would've been better spent on the study of mathematics,

for it was that, along with a downturn in Ingle's finances

which would lead me away from the path to Eton.

Instead, at 14, I was enrolled in Wellington College.

Wellington was a military establishment,

and, I suppose much like the rest of the public schools of the day,

but with the addition of endless polishing.

The smell of Brasso haunts my nostrils still.

If you've got some sensitivity and you've got a sort of,

for want of a better word, an artistic soul,

and you're pushed through the British public school system

as a male...

...it can absolutely kill that.

There's such a strong ethic in that schooling that,

about what it is or is not to be a man.

And I think right down in his heart, this is my intuition,

there's absolutely nothing to bear this up, it's just...

it's just sense. He was very feminine.

And... very sensitive.

And I feel that he didn't quite know how to express that side of him.

'What awaited me as I aged out of Wellington,

'was likely an Oxbridge education

'followed by a career in international diplomacy.

'I was practically bred for it.

'By this stage, my French, German and Russian were already rather good.

'But something happened.

'Ingle went bust, bankrupt, to the sum of £25,000.

'He left my mother and faded into the distance.'

I never knew his father, my grandfather,

and I never knew his step-father.

Both those father figures had sort of disappeared out of his life,

and that explains quite a lot about him as well,

because he didn't have a father around.

It was his mother's influence that he took away

into the world much more.

'At 19-years-old, unsure of my future,

'I found myself in Paris.

'Early one morning a friend dragged me to Versailles.

'There was something he wanted me to see.

'We arrived to an open square, steadily filling with people.

'Dawn broke over the scene

'and I realised that the focus of the amassed crowd

'was Madame Guillotine.

'In that instant, a man was marched out,

'Eugen Weidmann.

'He had murdered six people in cold blood.

'Within 30 seconds

'he had been whisked off his feet, bound, punched in the gut,

'placed on the monstrous contraption and adjusted into position.

'The blade fell and I failed to look away.

'I was sickened to my soul.

'I watched the gleeful crowd clamour to dip their handkerchiefs

'into his warm blood as a grizzly souvenir.'

He had witnessed the last execution

in France with a guillotine.

So, he was obsessed with executions.

And he kept execution memorabilia.

"This is the rope that was used to hang, I don't know who."

"Who gave you that?"

"That was Pierpoint, gave it to me.

I'm gonna leave it in my will to Roger Moore."

I remember that he wrote,

"I am leaving you the rope that was used to hang...

King I-Don't-Know-What that my friend Pierpoint passed over to me.

I would like you to have it."

I don't think Roger Moore got it.

I now suspected my friend was trying to dispel my naivete

and ready me for the brutalities of war.

Because within weeks the party was over

and all of a sudden, the Germans were coming.

I returned to London.

'On the 3rd of September, Chamberlain declared we were at war.

'Keen to reveal myself a hero,

'I immediately reported to the war office,

'who had no apparent need for me.'

So, I took a job in the city

and grew accustomed to the noises of the war at home.

And then, I heard something even worse.

I heard that my wayward Papa was in hospital with a terminal diagnosis.

He was barely 60.

It was, I suppose, to honour him

that I swiftly decided again to enlist

and join the war abroad.

'I couldn't face the army, so I took to the skies.'

'Six weeks by sea and one by train brought us

'to flight training in Rhodesia, far from enemy fire.

'South Africa was paradise.

'Behind the controls of an open cockpit Tiger Moth, I felt alive!

'In the shimmering heat haze of a dusty afternoon,

'we would stall, spin, and loop our paths

'to becoming fully-fledged pilots.

'During my final accompanied flight,

'my head filled with fire and I went blind in my left eye.

'I was diagnosed with an unreliable optic nerve.

'My dreams of flight were put paid to.

Following this, I rather expected my war to be a dull clerical affair

but then I found myself in an operational squadron,

and my role was that of... spy.

'Five missions a day was our average

'and with our robust fighter bombers, the P-40s,

'we outclassed the German Luftwaffe every time.

'Well, except once.

'We were in Tunisia,

'and I was standing on the airstrip assessing the skies first-hand.

'As I turned around, I was faced with a sheer wall of flame.

'Above it, four German ME-109s heading directly for me.

'I sprinted, completely exposed,

'looking for somewhere to dive for cover.

'The bombs couldn't have been more than 150 yards away.

'I could feel the heat singe my neck hair.

'The final bomb landed within range,

'and the blast rent asunder the ground behind me.

'The debris created was as if fired by shotgun,

'targeted almost entirely to my buttocks.

'Within 10 minutes,

'I was being debriefed in both senses of the word.

'I could not sit down for two days.

'And had I been able, I suspect I would not have been permitted to.

'This raid was my failing.

'I would not fail again.'

As the war ended, there was still important work to be done.

My next posting was to serve with the Central Registry

of War Crimes and Security Suspects.

A position which sounds almost clerical

but became known somewhat more grandly as Nazi Hunter.

The adventures I had during this period remain highly classified.

I could relate to you a story or two,

but sadly I would have to kill you.

And we don't want that, do we?

There is some mystery attached to his work

during the war and immediately after it.

A lot of that I think, has to do with the Official Secrets Act

and the fact that Lee himself was, you know,

not willing to open up about it to any great degree.

And I think it has actually created a great deal of confusion.

I know a bit.

Because he spoke perfect German, perfect French,

and perfect Italian, he was involved with a lot of sabotage

and working with partisans behind the enemy lines

and also in targeted assassinations.

Which, of course, the British government

doesn't know anything about.

He was very intense.

There were some things he just- he didn't want to get into,

but it marked him, the experiences.

But I gave him shit. I mean, I always wanted to know.

"Tell me about the war." "John, I can't."

"Come on!" You know? "Tell me about the war. Come on, Chris!"

You know? And I always gave him a hard time.

And one day we were at...

...a restaurant in Sloane Square

and he had had several glasses of wine

and he wasn't tipsy,

but he was a little loose.

And I said, "Chris...

this is the perfect moment.

Tell me about your war experiences."

He said, "You know I can't." And I said, "Come on.

Who am I gonna tell, Chris?" And I kept giving him shit.

And then finally he said, "John," and he leaned forward.

To be suddenly imposing, he leaned forward and he said,

"Can you keep a secret?"

So of course, I lean forward and go, "Yes."

And he said...

"So can I."

'I arrived back in London,

'like so many of my generation, to find that civilian life

'had far less use for me than the military had.

'With a new blue suit

and half a pound of shrapnel forever embedded in my buttocks,

'I slowly explored my options

'and ravenously accepted all invitations to lunch.

'One such invitation came from my mother's cousin, Nicolo,

'the Italian Ambassador to Great Britain.

'Amidst my drunken tales and impersonations,

'Nicolo said simply, "Why don't you become an actor, Christopher?"

'So, that was that.

'It was immediately apparent to me that he was right.

'Before I even had a chance to fail,

'Nicolo arranged a meeting for me with his friend

'who worked with The Rank Organisation.'

I suppose if you were being uncharitable,

you could say that there was a touch of almost nepotism

involved in Lee's entry into the film industry.

So, it was all very easy. But I think...

in the immediate post-war years, it didn't last very long,

but the British film industry was at its zenith.

And I think there was a great hunger,

particularly after the war, to create new stars.

And so, as a result, Lee was packed off to the...

to The Rank Charm School, as it became known.

Which had an expressed...

wish to create British,

and hopefully later, as they put it, international stars.

'To Worthing we were sent to fill out the lower half of the cast lists

'of a provincial repertory theatre.

'And admittedly, many lessons were learned

'which would shape me as an actor.

'The first time I trod the boards was as Roberto the Butler,

'in The Constant Nymph.

'I gave it my all. I buttled relentlessly.

'More than this, I acted.

'I acted my young heart out.

'When one of the principal characters cried, I shed a tear with them.

'When one laughed, I laughed too as if my sides were splitting.

'I responded to every word of that script as I felt right.

'From my place in the background, I projected outrage,

'good humour, surprise, and bonhomie.

'The curtain fell for the interval and the director took me aside.

'I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying,

'but either way, he left me in no doubt as to my transgression.

'I had upstaged the entire production.

'My feelings were terribly hurt,

'and I was greatly embarrassed.

'I was, however, vindicated when the reviews came in.

'The critics singled me out as having provided welcome light relief.

'By day in Highbury,

'we learned Stanislavsky's method of physical action.

'We fenced, we pranced, we raged,

'and we paraded the old church hall with books upon our heads.

'Of course, no directors had the slightest interest in using us

'for more than background and stand-ins for the talent.

'But this in itself was film set experience and therefore useful.

'I was 24 when I gave my first performance on film,

'a kindness extended to me by director Terence Young,

'who overcame the standard reason for my rejection,

'the issue of my height, by keeping me seated.

'The film was Corridor of Mirrors.

'I had one line and it was a withering barb against the lead.'

Take a look. Standing in the entrance, Lord Byron.

'To some degree, in that moment, my die was cast.

'The nucleus of my celluloid id,

'upper class, educated, loquacious, and disdainful.

'Soon after, Rank decided to give its company of youth

'an accelerant boost.

'Rather than scattering us in small roles across its bigger releases,

'it would give us all big roles in our own tiny release.

'It was, of course, a horrible idea.

'None of us were nearly ready enough to carry an entire feature

'and, had it not been compulsory to attend the premiere

'on the Tottenham Court Road,

'I'm sure all of us would have preferred to be elsewhere.

'It was, however, my first time in the role of chief antagonist,

'the bad guy.

'Sadly, the only thing more diabolical than my character's intent

'was the performance of the actor inhabiting it.

'Such was the British film industry in those days

'that even this early on I was at least working,

'and my star was arguably rising.

'Scott of the Antarctic was a generously-budgeted

'Ealing production.

'It starred John Mills as the legendary explorer,

'and I was one of his ill-fated team.

'Not unlike the explorer I portrayed,

'I would also shortly be out in the cold.'

I'm afraid that's it, Sir.

'I was told by my benefactors at Rank that I was too tall

'and too foreign-looking to be a film star,

'and I was out on my ear.

'My 1950s would be a mixed bag of quite small roles

'in quite big films.

'But then there were also the small roles in small films.

'And then there were the uncredited roles.'

These years were not without their high points.

'I parried with Errol Flynn.'

He was quite a good fencer.

Although how many people have told you when Chris would go like this,

he'd say, and he'd point at his damaged finger

and he'd say, "Errol Flynn did that to me."

Which he did in a duel in some movie.

Errol Flynn, you know... was not an excellent fencer.

But these were not roles that I could...

get my teeth into.

It was a living, and it was work.

The notion of film acting, especially in Britain at that time,

as being in any way glamorous or indicative of a luxurious lifestyle,

is entirely false.

Back then, maybe still today, I don't know,

there's a slight whiff of disreputability, if that's a word,

clung to the acting thing.

I think there was a bit of him saying, "I suppose you think

I'm not worthwhile because I'm just an actor." You know?

Which of course that's reversed much now, where you know,

you get a lot of people go, "Oh gosh, actors."

"They're really exciting people."

But in my father's day, there was a bit of snootiness about actors.

Of course, he always told the story that when he went to his mother

and announced his intention to become an actor, and she literally,

in a very actressy way, she struck a melodramatic pose

and possibly, you know, the back of the hand to the forehead,

and said, "An actor.

Oh, Christopher, just think of all the appalling people you'll meet!"

'It was work.

'It was work, which I generally enjoyed

'and work in which I became increasingly proficient.

'But it was 9:00am to 6:20pm.

'with a 15-minute tea break and one hour for lunch.

'It was a job.

'And seven years on a job without notable progression

'would be frustrating to anybody.

'But it was not just my lack of progress which frustrated me.'

I really wanted to sing.

My love for opera had blossomed.

And with my film career barely advanced

in the best part of a decade,

I petitioned a professor at the Royal College of Music for help.

Too tall, too foreign-looking, and now, too old.

My dream was dead,

dead, dead.

But that was, I suppose, alright,

death was calling me to another destiny.

It was almost time for me to be death's emissary in modern cinema.

Now, to understand the story of my Dracula,

you have to understand the story of Hammer.

'Hammer was a film production company which, by the mid-50s',

'had been around some two decades.

'It had been established by the comedian William Hines

'in the early '30s, a name for his stage persona Will Hammer.'

Post-war, Hammer Film Productions

were devoted to second features.

Yes, what would previously have been called Quota Quickies.

They began, really, with very forward thinking.

They began by adapting already popular BBC radio subjects.

But in among all that, they also got together

with an American producer called Robert Lippert,

and they started making second features

that were aimed, quite specifically, at the American market.

Robert Lippert would send over fading American actors,

and they would be leads in the pictures,

which would allow a sale in America.

And so, there was a whole series of pictures that Hammer had done,

which are, you know, not bad pictures but not exemplary.

But they didn't make much of a splash.

Curious little films,

which nowadays are very often identified as Neo-noirs.

To some degree they were certainly were that.

But of course, the question mark was,

how long could you continue in that vein?

They needed a kind of new hook, a new formula.

And well, it came along in the mid-'50s.

'Hammer was always in search of that golden goose,

'which they eventually found

'when they turned their hand to the macabre.

'Having adapted the BBC's Quatermass Xperiment

'to film in 1955, it became very evident

'that scary films might be where their fortune lay.'

'What better subject matter to begin with

'than that of Baron Frankenstein and his creature?

'Peter Cushing was cast in the lead role as Frankenstein,

'but who was to play his creature?

'Where might they find a tall, odd-looking soul

'with the chops to pull off such a role?

'Oh, yes!'

In the case of Lee, they had a man for The Curse of Frankenstein,

who fulfilled the basic casting brief,

which was a very tall man with a knowledge of

and skill in movement and mime.

And, uh... And that was Lee to a T, if you like.

'Now, I did not go into this lightly.

'I was aware of the greatest risk of becoming a monster player.

'That of typecasting.

'My dear friend, Boris Karloff,

'argued that to be a type was to always be in employment.

'And considering his quarter century in the wilderness as an actor,

'he really was qualified to talk on the matter.

'He had acted in over 80 films before his performance as the monster

'for Universal Pictures launched him into the stratosphere.

'Crucially, he was also tall and foreign-looking.

'So, I took the role.

'I wouldn't say it did the same for me as it did for Boris,

'but it was a satisfying experience

'and the film performed remarkably well.'

Hammer didn't really have an identity

until The Curse of Frankenstein,

where it said, "A Hammer Film Production."

And we remembered that and that became... a calling card.

What's interesting is that it's a very well made movie.

He played it like somebody with a... with a damaged brain.

It was described in the British press

as looking like a road accident, which is not entirely untrue.

It's a strange effect that he had as the creature

because he looked so hideous and yet there was a sort of-

there was a kind of forlorn quality about him.

In part because of that,

but also because he was just such a remarkable physical actor.

He was very sympathetic, although he was really terrifying

and I had nightmares for a long time.

'Yes, it courted controversy with its violence and gore,

'but this was tempered by a favourable critical response.'

And it really put Hammer Films on the map internationally

because it was a huge hit, even though it didn't cost a great deal.

But it looked good and the acting was obviously top-notch

because they had British players and nobody made fun of it,

nobody sent it up.

It was all done completely straight

and that made it even more compelling.

His unwilling collaborator was Paul Krempe.

I can't prove you murdered him.

But I can stop you using his brain.

Why? He has no further use for it.

Don't be a fool! Be careful!

You'll damage it!

Only two women ever entered this house of evil.

Elizabeth! Come back!

'Did this lead to my most iconic casting?

'Actually, no. At least, not directly.'

'Following Frankenstein, I scored a plum role

'in a lavish remake of A Tale of Two Cities.

'This was a big movie.'

Betty Box and Ralph Thomas,

whose names have been associated with the very best

in film entertainment for almost a decade,

have turned to the ever-popular works

of Charles Dickens for their latest, greatest film.

'I was to share the screen with the likes of Dirk Bogarde

'and several legends whose fame has sadly dimmed through the years.

'My role was that of villain,

'the Marquis St. Evremonde,

'a nasty piece of work, a cruel, sneering aristocrat.'

'This film was also well-received

'and finally broke the reticence on the part of the studios

'to trust me with more significant roles.

'With my monstrous and aristocratic credentials so well-established,

'I was finally an obvious candidate

'for that delicious title role to come my way.

'Eight minutes.

'Just eight minutes, and my life was changed forever.

'My total screen time in the whole of that first Dracula movie

'was just eight minutes.'

This is the story of Dracula.

A creature who destroys all whom he touches.

Dracula, the terrifying, the feared,

who sleeps in the tombs of the dead by day

and arises at night to inflict his terror

upon the innocent and the unsuspecting.

It was really the Dracula movie that I think...

made him a household word.

Even though he's not in it that much,

he hung over it like a shroud and...

made an incredible impression.

I love his entrance

'cause you just cut to the stairs and he comes down the stairs.

He says, "I am Dracula. I welcome you to my house."

And it's so great!

Wonderful! I mean, he's just, wow.

It's, you know- Do you ever hear him talk about it?

"You have to bring the fire."

'I was recognised everywhere I went,

'and it was a certain type of fame.

'I don't say this out of pride or vanity,

'but I had become somewhat iconic.

'Meaning that, to some degree,

'it wouldn't matter what I now went on to do with my life.

'Indeed, had I retired from acting in that very moment,

'I would still, for the rest of my life,

'have been recognised on a daily basis as...'

Dracula! Bedevilled master of all that is evil.

When that film came out in the summer of 1958, you know,

the impact was enormous.

He's suddenly appearing in the fan magazines.

You know, there are lots and lots of questions about him.

Picturegoer actually heads a piece about him and calls it,

"Scream Boy? No! Dream Boy." Because of course,

so many young women were fascinated by his Dracula, you know?

Because he was an irredeemable monster,

one of the most evil Dracula's ever put on film.

But at the same time, of course, he was extremely sexy.

How do you destroy a fiend

who has so far proven himself indestructible?

Those who come to end his reign of terror

stay to become his victims.

Hammer suddenly became a...

a place for people to go to see a certain kind of movie.

And that's not to belittle the fact that

they were actually making other kinds of movies at the same time,

but these particular Gothic movies were especially popular.

'The American premiere took place in New York

'where Universal threw their full might behind its release.

'It was my first trip to America, and I was quite overwhelmed.

'Not just by the city, but by the clamour of the fans.

'Dear Peter and I damn near destroyed our wrists

'with all of the autograph signing.

'By that point, Mr Cushing and I had become good friends.

'I think the public often made the mistake of assuming

'that we were rather gloomy people, 'humourless and severe.

'But nothing could have been further from the truth.

'From the day we met, Peter and I,

'more than anything else, laughed.'

But we also did a lot of this kind of thing...

He and Chris became a kind of...

a kind of a couple in the sense that they would

often end up in the same picture together.

I think, I can't remember, 17, how many pictures they did together.

But they were like Laurel and Hardy, you know?

They were just-You would seldom see one without the other.

They were like chalk and cheese.

Very different, different styles of acting, different ways of acting,

and obviously totally different characters,

but it just gelled, you know?

The whole thing with them gelled

and they had huge respect for each other.

They always brought total conviction

to whatever crap they were in.

So, if they're in a terrible movie, they're still good.

You know? They're still good.

Do you know what they used to do?

They loved Looney Tunes cartoons.

Peter and Chris, and they'd get together and watch, you know,

Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and all the classic Looney Tunes,

and they really knew them. You could-

I was on a phone call with the two of them

and they did like the whole thing of "What's Opera, Doc?"

It was amazing.

'In some ways, Hammer became a family to me,

'replete with all the eccentricities, bickering,

'resentments and frustration,

'but also a warm, encouraging, and friendly bunch.'

They tended to have the same crews, you know?

They tended to have the same DPs and the same...

makeup and hairdressers,

and so it was a nice kind of continuity to it.

And all the crews knew each other so they worked so well together.

And Hammer made a lot of-not a lot,

but Hammer made a number of good films.

And they had tremendous success with a lot of stuff.

'I worked for other studios during this period also.

'I was in some demand, but my path was laid out for me now.

'I would be successful, but I would be... sleazy.

'Any notion of romantic leads or matinee heroes was behind me now.

'I had given the public and the studios what they wanted,

'and that would be all they required from me.

'Which is not to say there was no room for manoeuvre,

'for, as I discovered, there are so many types of sleazebag.

'Considering the limitation placed on me that I always be wicked,

'I was rather pleased with my range and breadth.

'Later on in the '60s, I befriended Vincent Price.

'Vincent had established himself as a gentleman of horror

'long before I came along.

'And when I did come along, along with me,

'came for him the daily indignity of being recognised as me.

'People would stop him in the street and say,

"Mr Lee, might I have your autograph?"

'But Vincent was so much more than a horror star.

'He gave lectures on painting, sculpture, and cookery.

'At the height of his success,

'he had a job on the side as an art buyer for Sears Roebuck.

'Vincent knew how to enjoy his work and enjoy his life.

'He enjoyed his public image and played up to it deliciously,

'but he also took relish in switching it off.

'I never heard him complain.

'Perhaps the one thing that I envied him and Peter

'was their ability to be so comfortable

'with the public's perception of them.'

I never quite was.

I think for a long time, horror fans,

particularly horror fans, liked Christopher Lee the least.

Not because of his performances,

but because of his attitude to his own performances and to the genre.

He sort of kidded himself as a result.

In some interviews he actually said, you know, in the late '60s,

as late as that, he was suggesting that The Curse of Frankenstein

was the only REAL horror film he'd been in.

And I think as a result, fans found him rather ungracious,

which is a bit of an irony

because ungracious is the one thing

Christopher Lee would never want to be thought to be.

'And then... there was Gitte.'

'She was a painter and a photographer.

'She modelled for Balenciaga and Dior,

'and her father was a director for the Tuborg Brewery in Copenhagen.

'After a couple of missed opportunities,

'our paths finally crossed, and entwined they would happily stay

'until the end of my life.

'My fame at this point was undoubtedly becoming global

'and when international filmmakers became aware

'of my ability to speak in several other languages,

'I found myself in demand.'

This was fortunate, as I unexpectedly found myself

under attack from a monster

the likes of which Hammer could never have envisioned.

He left England for Switzerland

as a tax refugee.

He came out with quite a lot of standard, you know?

Conservative stuff that it was...

the politics of envy

and this level of taxation couldn't...

you know, couldn't be maintained for any longer.

'With appropriate irony, the first role I was contracted to play

'as a non-domicile was one of the great fictional Englishman.

'It was my turn to don the deerstalker

'and interpret Sherlock Holmes...

'into German.'

'Despite my perfectly adequate German delivery,

'they decided to dub my voice.'

'From Germany to Italy.'

'The Crypt of the Vampire was shot in Avezzano

'at the Castello de Balsorano.

'The film was good, but the location, divine.

'I would come to know the castles of Europe rather well

'as it transpired that many of the filmmakers who wanted to work with me

'may not have wanted me to play Dracula,

'but certainly a derivative thereof.'

Going to Europe in 1962 was a very good idea because, you know,

the early Hammer horror films and the other British horror films

that grew up around Hammer were enormously venerated in France

and also had made a huge impact in Italy.

He's in all these German and French and Spanish movies, Italian movies,

where they're not movies we even know about

because they were never dubbed into English

and he's speaking French or Italian or German or Spanish.

They are quite interesting because they're all fractured versions

of the persona that he first showed in the Hammer films.

Italy, of course, was an industry that would always go for what was

the now thing and how can we produce our own version of it.

Well, one very good way to produce it was to get Christopher Lee in.

So, you know, there he was by the shores of Lake Geneva

during his Swiss exile, and he was constantly popping down to Italy.

Italy was a perfect place.

There were wonderful locations, et cetera.

And who was the number one star in horror pictures?

Christopher Lee.

So, I reached out for Christopher

and when I met him, we just became fast friends.

And I... raised some money

and put together the first budget

for Castle of the Living Dead.

And that's how it happened.

The Castle of the Living Dead.

In an atmosphere of horror,

the story of a man who violates the forbidden frontiers of science...

...to arrive at a frightful but lucid madness

and atrocious inhuman crime.

Starring the unforgettable creator of Dracula.

'The great joys of my experience in Europe, were my partnerships

with the Italian director Mario Bava and the Spanish Jess Franco.

He made quite a few pictures with Jess Franco,

who obviously he must have respected and liked on some level.

Very few of them are at the top of the heap of the movies

that he would wanna be remembered for.

But interestingly,

he changed his mind about doing a Dracula picture

because he did one for Jess.

And, action!

The idea was that this was going to be 'the' Dracula picture,

based on the book, which was always a bugaboo of his,

is how few things from the book ended up in these movies.

And it was another thread-bearer kind of a movie.

Although Pere Portobella made a really interesting documentary

about the making of that movie,

which is actually much more interesting than the movie itself.

'To the continental filmmakers,

'sex and death went hand-in-hand

'along with pain and pleasure.

'Accusations of downright perversity were levelled at some of these films,

'but it was merely the European way.

'Their art and literature have been infused with sex

'as far back as can be remembered.

'My films from this time have a distinctly different feel.

'Sometimes dreamy, delirious, or demented,

'it was a heady and creative time for me.'

A film of mystery! A film of thrill!

A film of terror!

He made some amazing films,

and he was delighted to be working in particular with Mario Bava.

But I think he was very aware that this was really just...

...a continuation, if you like, of what he called his graveyard period,

because he was very much looked upon as a Gothic personage.

'On the 22nd of November 1963,

'Gitte gave birth to our wonderful daughter, Christina.

'We were now a family.

'The idea of leaving them, for even a small amount of time,

'filled me with anxiety.

'Death started to mean something different to me.

'For the first time, I truly feared it.

'For the idea of not living to see Christina bloom and conquer

'was unimaginably painful.'

The charms of Switzerland had worn off by now

and taxman be damned, we just wanted to be home.

So, we returned to London and took a flat

a stone's throw from Mr Karloff.

My career had gone international,

yet I didn't seem to have moved a step.

The allowance of days that I was given as a tax exile

by the government to work in the UK had all gone to Hammer

and my return made me feel as if perhaps, I had never even left.

But then a new character beckoned me.

And although he certainly was of the shadows,

it was as far from typecasting as I could reasonably hope.

'I was not the first to bring the evil Dr Fu Manchu to screen.

'Seven screen Fus had preceded me,

'including a memorable turn by Boris.

'It is perhaps unimaginable that such a film be made today,

'not just the racial characterisations,

'but the very fact that the main role, a Chinese man,

'be played by a Caucasian Englishman.

'I can only say that I have never played Fu Manchu

'in any way that the Chinese could find offensive.

'However, I can understand their objection to the character

'being referred to as 'the Yellow Peril'.

'I played Fu over the course of five films

'and very much following the pattern of my involvement

'with the Hammer Dracula series,

'it was a case of steadily diminishing returns.

'In fact, these two franchises, in the modern parlance,

'overlapped throughout my 1960s and '70s.'

Hammer, which was not exactly in the business of making art,

decided that this was a vein that they wanted to mine.

And so, they ended up...

essentially remaking those pictures like seven, eight times,

and they ended up doing kind of the same thing that Universal did,

which is sort of running it into the ground after a while.

There was always less of Dracula in every one of the movies

until you get to Taste the Blood of Dracula, which is not a bad movie,

it looks like it was conceived without Dracula.

And indeed, it had been. "No, we're not gonna have to."

But Warner Brothers, the distributor said, "We can't distribute

this picture without Christopher Lee. It's a Dracula movie!"

There's a couple of real shit Hammers that he's in

that he gives you this long story about.

Someone calls him and says...

"Chris, you have to come, you have to be Dracula

because the movie's cast, we've committed the money.

Everyone, the carpenters, you know,

all the group, the family, you know,

it'll fall apart if you don't do it."

You know they used to guilt him into these things.

He never gave less than his all.

I mean, he was always good in the movies.

He did the best job he could.

But I think that he felt after a while he was just wasting his time

and that he was sort of sullying whatever...

name value he may have.

He had that ambivalence towards the role of Dracula.

It had got him where he was, it had got him recognition,

but it also was the sort of thing that he could never leave behind

and that so many people thought was all he could do.

You know, I got him to sign a poster for me once.

I only got him to sign one poster

and it was a poster for Taste the Blood of Dracula.

He grumbled a bit when I asked him to sign it

and the message he wrote on it was,

"Dear Peter, this is from another life."

You know? He regarded that as being something that was...

He did but he wanted to move on from that.

And, you know, personally speaking,

I think the balance, he could've got the balance a bit better

where he moved on, but not...

not to the point that he somehow

came across as being ashamed of those films.

'Cause he had nothing whatsoever to be ashamed about.

He was absolutely the king of his...

of all he surveyed really, in that niche.

But he wasn't satisfied with that.

It's an interesting conundrum

but I think it's a lot to do with, you know,

his ancestry where great things were expected of him

and here he was playing monsters.

Both of us had the same degree of a certain lack of confidence,

which did come from our family, I think,

because my grandmother could be very withering.

I don't know. Not withering about acting.

In fact, acting was the one thing that we made our family

proud about, funnily enough. It was everything else you were

that felt a bit sort of, "I'm not quite up to scratch."

And I can't define it

and I'd love to have sat down and talked to him about it.

But it's just a sort of... aura in the family of sort of...

There's a threat of ridicule somewhere in the atmosphere.

Here's the funny thing, he loved playing Dracula.

When you're that good at playing a part,

and when you have such command of the screen,

and you can make such an impact in such a short time,

of course you're going to love playing that part.

'Hollywood finally came calling,

'and although this time it would be upon British soil,

'I would actually be working very closely

'with a certified legendary Hollywood director.

'Billy Wilder had decided to make a Sherlock Holmes film.

'He, quite correctly, saw me as Mycroft,

'Holmes' arguably more clever, older brother.'

Am I going too fast with the best brain in England?

Go on.

They planted that on you quite neatly, I must admit,

so that you could lead them to their objective, the air pump.

Very much like using a hog to find truffles.

'It had taken me 23 years and over 100 films

'before I was to have such a thoroughly satisfying experience.'

Oh, charming!

Chris was very proud of Mycroft Holmes,

but what he was proud of

was, although he's wonderful in the movie,

but he was proud of being employed by Billy Wilder.

That's what was, you know?

That's what was... "I'm being- I'm with one of the greats."

The early to mid-70s' were to offer me two roles

which could hold their own in the iconic stakes against old Dracula.

Finally, I was to go up against Britain's finest secret agent.

But before we go into that.

It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.

'Now, I've never been shy about proclaiming

'this as my favourite of all the films I've appeared in.

'There are many reasons for this.

'Firstly, it's a brilliant story, expertly told.'

You can't land here without written permission!

I, as you can see, am a police officer.

A complaint has been registered

by a resident of this island of a missing child!

Now that makes it a police matter,

private property or not!

Now, will you send a dingy, please?

Need to tell his lordship.

'The great playwright Anthony Shaffer found a novel

'in which he saw a kernel of a story which intrigued him.

'We bought the rights, and he made it his own.'

Good afternoon, Sergeant Howie.

I trust the sight of the young people refreshes you.

No, Sir.

It does not refresh me.

Oh, I'm sorry.

One should always be open to the regenerative influences.

'He conceived of the role of Lord Summerisle for me.

'I assure you that this is an extreme rarity in the business.

'To have a part not just handed to you,

'but inspired by you is a rare moment,

'especially one this good!'

In that case, you must go ahead.

The Wicker Man really drew from a lot of his past

as a horror icon...

...because The Wicker Man is unquestionably a horror film.

And at the heart of it, of course,

you've got Lee playing, you know, the laird

who lives in the castle at the top of the hill,

to whom the unsuspecting innocent person has to travel by coach.

Is this reminding you of anybody? You know.

It's a very clever manipulation of his image.

And I think to a degree, Lee was aware of that,

but he was aware that in manipulating his image like that

Shaffer had given him some beautiful dialogue

and a marvellously ambiguous character to play.

What my grandfather had started out of expediency,

my father continued out of... love.

He brought me up the same way.

To reverence the music and the drama

and the rituals of the old gods.

To love nature and to fear it.

And to rely on it and to appease it when necessary.

He brought me up- He brought you up to be a pagan!

A heathen, conceivably,

but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.

'How different could two film shoots be?

'From the grey wind-swept hills of coastal Scotland

'to the sun-drenched beaches of Thailand?

'Famously, the 007 films were lavish Pan Global productions,

'which shot for months with a travelling team of hundreds.

'The producers were Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman,

'by now millionaires many times over

'thanks to their shrewd licencing of my cousin Ian Fleming's books.

'Oh, yes, Ian and I were quite the pair.

'I've heard talk that certain elements of the James Bond character

'were in fact based upon me and my own wartime experiences.

'But of course, I couldn't possibly comment on such matters.

'Sadly, by now, Ian was dead

'and never did get to see me play one of his characters.

'But here I was now squaring off against Roger Moore,

'and what a match we made.'

You live well, Scaramanga.

At a million dollars a contract, I can afford to Mr Bond.

You work for peanuts.

A hearty, "Well done" from Her Majesty the Queen

and a pittance of a pension.

Apart from that, we are the same.

To us, Mr Bond.

We are the best.

He was kind of thrilled to be The Man with the Golden Gun...

...because it was a big Hollywood international production

and Cubby Broccoli and, you know,

it was the biggest thing going and he was delighted to be in that.

And I would say,

"Chris, it was the third nipple you're delighted by, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about?"

He was pretty easy to tease.

'My performance has regularly been singled out

'as one of the better Bond villains,

'and that is a compliment I don't take lightly.

'My star had risen. I had arrived.'

I think the first time he ever got ever any kind of nice treatment

by the critics in the UK was The Man with the Golden Gun.

He was a very sensitive man and he'd been, really,

cruelly treated by the critics and everything for years.

There's a little, little touch of bad luck even here

because finally Christopher is playing a Bond villain

and he's being, to my mind, one of the very best Bond villains,

but he's in a Bond film that is...

..a bit of a curate's egg.

You know, I mean, look,

by comparison to most of Christopher Lee's films,

The Man with the Golden Gun made squillions of dollars.

But by comparison to the other James Bond films up to that time,

it was a little bit of a damp squib, even commercially.

So, you know, there were these- these little touches of bad luck

sort of drop through even at the moments of zenith.

But maybe-maybe that's, you know, the actor's lot in many ways.

On my return to Britain, all that awaited me

were more dismal deaths in dank dungeons.

And to be honest, not so many of those

since Hammer was in steep decline.

'In our mutual interest, I had picked up the rights

'to some of Dennis Wheatley's literary properties

'and hoped to motivate Hammer into action on a more modern type of film,

'which might compete with the likes of The Exorcist.'

'Well, they dragged their feet, but eventually got it made.

'A tepid adaptation which angered Wheatley.'

'It would be my last film for Hammer,

the end of an era.

'They had managed to snare Richard Widmark as leading man,

and he joined the Transatlantic Chorus,

'started a decade ago by Billy Wilder and finally convinced me

'that it was time to up sticks and move, lock stock to America.'

America, where I was appreciated, respected,

and where Hollywood seemed ripe with promise.

He had a decent life here.

It wasn't...

a life of discotheques and things like that.

It was a life of work

because he did work quite a bit

when he came to Hollywood.

It was a very fruitful period for Christopher.

It really was.

He loved being in Hollywood and he was working.

He got to work with Jack Lemmon and Lee Grant, you know?

Real actors and real Hollywood stars,

and he really enjoyed it.

'My first film was a huge movie for Universal,

'Airport 77.

'The Airport films were the original and finest exponents

'of the very popular, new 'disaster movie' genre.

'The format was simple and effective.

'A large cast of popular celebrities, old and new,

'are thrust into a cataclysmic situation.

'The fun of these films was the absolute unpredictability

'as to who would survive and who would die.

'I would be sharing the screen and the first-class lounge

'with Jack Lemmon, Olivia de Haviland,

'Joseph Cotton, and Jimmy Stewart.

'To absolutely nobody in the world's surprise,

'I died.

'But it was a good death,

'a hero's death, a new death.

'I had to train for a week in a water tank to accomplish it.

'And upon completion, I received an award

'more meaningful to me than an Oscar.

'The hallowed Stunt Team belt buckle,

'a recognition that you were one of them.

This is a good start! I mean,

it's a slightly silly disaster film of the period, but nevertheless

it's a big thing. But because of Christopher's workaholic tendencies,

the next thing he does involves going to Canada

to appear in something called Starship Invasions.

Um...

And you know that film is an embarrassment on many levels.

However, there are some wonderful things happening for him in the USA.

He goes over to NYC to be guest host

on Saturday Night Live in March 1978.

'I had a wonderful time but was grateful to learn after the fact,

'that the audience viewing figures were as high as 35 million.

'By far my largest audience for anything I had ever previously done.

'Had I known such a figure before taking part,

'I'd have been a babbling fool.

'My appearance, seen by really everyone who was anyone,

'announced to the American film and TV industry that I was alive,

'that I was available, and that I was perhaps

'more versatile than they might have expected.'

Having shown America my capacity for humour,

the phone started ringing

and one of those calls was from Steven Spielberg.

'His next film was to be a comedy.

'Set around the confusion in the immediate aftermath

'of the bombing of Pearl Harbour. It would see me paired

'with the legendary Japanese actor, Toshiro Mifune.

'I played a German U-boat captain,

'speaking entirely in the German language.

'Mifune played my begrudging partner,

'a Japanese submarine commander

'who spoke entirely in, of course, Japanese.

'Now, the joke was that we railed against one another

'in our mother tongues but could understand each other perfectly.

'And therein lies the problem.

'It's not a particularly funny concept.

'True to its subject matter, the movie bombed.

'Serial was a very modern satire of life

'for the Baby Boomers in 1970s San Francisco.

'I played Luckman, a local businessman,

'respected and successful, who, on weekends,

'donned leathers and became Skull,

'fearsome leader of the local homosexual motorcycle gang.'

♪ Might I say that I'm old-fashioned... ♪

'My run of strange and wonderful pictures continued

'with a jaunt to Australia to film The Return of Captain Invincible.

'I was firmly back in mad fascistic villain territory,

'but the rest of the film was truly bizarre.'

I built a fish! Hit the dirt!

'Only Captain Invincible can stop me,

if he can kick his addiction to the booze.'

♪ If you don't name your poison

♪ I'll have to get the boys in

♪ The spirit of adventure opens one's eyes

♪ If you don't name your poison...

'To finally sing on film,

'do you think I might have been enjoying myself?'

♪ Sunrise ♪

There's no one that is in any doubt of how versatile he was

and the fact he was capable of other things. You know?

But I think a lot of the movies he made from the 1970s onwards

were really a reaction of getting as far away

from those horror movies

as he possibly could.

Christopher was very keen on playing,

as he called them, Short roles.

He didn't carry a film.

He punctuated a film

in an enormously exciting and brilliant way.

But he punctuated stories rather than carrying them.

Short roles enabled him to go

from film to film, to film, to film,

sometimes to make multiple films at the same time.

'My antagonistic services became very much in demand.

'Now, admittedly, not all of the roles I played were in

'what one might consider premium quality productions.'

I wouldn't hesitate to shoot this young lady, you know?

As you can hear, I don't have very much choice.

That's better. Easy does it.

I would say maybe half the movies that he made

are more or less forgettable.

And he once said to me that he pitied me

because I had seen so many of his movies.

I think he had such a hunger to...

to keep doing things,

such a curiosity about doing things.

He didn't always say, "Is there any artistic merit in this?"

He didn't wanna be left out.

He just... He just felt that,

"The next one is gonna be the...

a better one."

I think he just took the rough with the smooth

all the way through his career.

And things didn't quite work out how he always wanted them

to work out, you know? He put that in perspective

with his wartime experiences and so what?

We had spent almost a decade in America,

and I had somewhat stretched my wings there,

but life, as it will, conspired to bring me back home.

'I was in Las Vegas shooting the movie Jocks

'when I felt quite unwell.

'I was getting tired very easily and walking became quite exhausting.'

'I went to see a doctor.

'She told me that my mitral valve in my left ventricle

'wasn't closing correctly.

'In that moment, I realised that, quite literally,

'my heart was no longer in it.

'Our departure was swift.

'Back in London I took to Harley Street,

'province of the private clinician,

'where, at great expense,

'I was pricked and prodded and invaded and examined,

'and the decision was taken that surgery was essential.

'I campaigned against one of those new-fangled plastic valves

'as I had heard terrifying tales of recipients of such

'dropping dead mid-sentence.

'As an aspirational raconteur and a connoisseur of the act of death,

'I could think of no worse way to expire.

'So, they offered me the valve of a pig,

'which I gladly accepted.

'In the moment, however, they decided to mend rather than replace.

'So much of my life had been spent as a purveyor of fear,

'terror, darkness, and blood.

'Here I was now at their mercy.

'I was scared.

'I wrote letters to Gitte and Christina

'should the worst happen, and then as I waited for the hour to come,

'I took comfort in that which has always given me comfort.

'I first read The Lord of the Rings upon publication.

'All three volumes were released in quite quick succession

'within a year or so, and I absolutely devoured them.

'I was obsessed to the degree that I read the full trilogy

'every single year for the rest of my life.

'I met Tolkien in the '50s quite by chance.

'I was in Oxford with friends.

'We were drinking merrily in the Eagle and Child Pub

#when the door opened and in he walked.

'You see, I recognised him from his photograph on the dust jacket.

'In he came and somehow, he joined our group for a couple of ales.

'All I could say was, "How do you do?"

'That is it, all I could manage.

'I had so many questions for him I didn't know where to start

'and really didn't know how it might end up.

'So, I just smiled and nodded and enjoyed his presence.

'I enjoyed being in his presence and I have no regrets.

'I could well have scared him away or upset or annoyed him

'and that I would've regretted to this day.

'No, it was quite alright just to have been around him.

'It is a very good memory.

'So, before my operation and in my sick bed

'and during my recuperation,

'I mentally transported myself to Middle Earth.

'And The Fellowship with all of their goodness and decency,

'played a role in my recovery and recover I did.

'My return to London also marked a return to old friends.

'House of the Long Shadows,

'really more of a Gothic chamber piece

'with the occasional unfortunate demise and a risible ending.

'This project would see me reunited on screen,

'not just with Peter, but also Vincent.

'Who could say no to a family reunion?

They were such gentlemen. You know, so respectful

of each other's talent and...

and of all the crew.

And modest, all very modest, about their talent.

'Cause they are, yes, as we said, the Holy Trinity of Horror.

'I was the youngest of the trio by a decade.

'Vincent was the youngest in spirit.

'But it was clear that Peter was winding down.

'Peter, if we're truthful, had been winding down

'since the death of his beloved wife, Helen, a decade earlier.

'He never recovered. Had no desire to recover, you see.

'From the moment he lost her,

'he was just passing time until they could be reunited in death.

'He kept busy.

'He had a huge success appearing in Star Wars,

'but I don't think he cared.

'He cared about being professional and giving a great performance.

'He just didn't care about his standing

'or the acclaim or the money.

'He lived a quiet life in Whitstable, by the sea there.

'He painted his miniatures, and he passed the time.

'Ultimately, he waited 23 years

'until he could join his dear Helen.

'He was truly a special man,

'and he was my friend.

'His last job was to narrate a documentary

'about Hammer films with me.'

- I was in Cannes for two days recently. - Say that louder.

I was in Cannes for two days recently.

- And everybody gave me a big welcome. - What were you doing there?

- Well, talking about you. - That's it for you.

- As usual. - Yes. - And somebody said to me,

"And how is Mr Cushing?"

I said, "I don't know."

This is happening all over the world.

People say to me, "How is Mr Cushing?"

Sometimes they say, "Good morning, Mr Cushing."

Sometimes they do that too. It's either that or Mr Price.

Always. Always.

'We had a wonderful day together.

'But as we said, goodbye, I had a premonition.

'I knew it would be the last time I would see him.

'And it was.'

I did not wind down.

He really loved doing movies.

Not just the movie itself, the whole process.

From reading the script to meeting the people at the set,

meeting other actors, exchanging ideas.

At home, he would be bored.

He would have nothing to do. He was restless.

He was in a situation in where

he was not getting any prominent movies.

In other words, he was getting...

meaningless parts.

The majority of people thought that he had passed away

'cause he had not been really in the mainstream.

At the time, I'm talking 1995.

From 1995 maybe to 1998, around that time.

He didn't wanna do any more horror movies

because he had done everything already.

There wasn't anything else to be done.

He thought that he had so much more to give than just that,

so, he wasn't getting the type of work that he wanted.

He came to see me playing at Stratford-on-Avon

in the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he came afterwards.

Afterwards, he said, "I'm so jealous of you...

because, you know, I'd love to have done

some of the great classical roles on the stage."

He was very, very keen to play Don Quixote.

I think that would've been a fantastic part for him, actually.

Can you just see him sitting astride that knackered old horse, you know?

In his Spanish armour, tilting at windmills.

The whole idea-I think in a way that role spoke to him.

'Cause the whole idea of tilting at windmills, i.e.

at conventional film stardom,

was something that he understood.

He did have a lot of rejection,

um, which people don't know about.

And so, you do, you know,

you could spend hours of your day being sad about where you didn't go.

And he did sometimes get into that place.

He was jealous.

He was jealous of certain actors.

He was jealous of Michael Caine.

I said, "Christopher, why are you jealous of Michael Caine?

Michael is a brilliant actor. You're a brilliant actor."

He would never give me the reasons.

He just thought that Michael Caine got more attention.

At this time, I actually turned largely to my great hobby of singing

and took a serious stab at making a go of it.

He did a narration for Rhapsody of Fire.

That was the first time that he worked

with a mainstream heavy metal band.

They were huge. And they're still huge.

They are pioneers of Symphonic and Power Metal.

He liked the music because...

it's very similar to the music that he liked.

He loved Wagner. And in his opinion,

Wagner and heavy metal are interconnected.

The music is very powerful,

big stories. So, you know,

that's how he knew about metal.

'I was hooked.

'A few years later, I formed The Charlemagne Project.

'What would become two full albums.'

Christopher had worked before in several albums,

several projects, he wanted to do some more.

So there is where we came in, huh?

The project started with

Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross,

and then the second heavy metal album, which was more heavy,

if that's a phrase.

Now the first album was more symphonic metal.

♪ Four thousand men all dead in one day

♪ They would not renounce their heathen ways... ♪

We first, we did the symphonic one,

and there are two generations of fans.

Some loved it because it was symphonic.

It's light, they like that. But the more extreme,

the more heavier fans, ah, they were disappointed.

"Oh, this is not metal! This is symphonic."

We had to do it heavier.

And also, Sir Christopher said, "This needs to be one.

This needs to be heavier.

Needs to be much, much heavier! The music is not powerful enough.

The orchestra, we need more power!" Remember he said, "More power?"

"You know, I can sing much louder than that," right?

♪ I shed blood of the Saxon man

♪ I shed the blood of the Saxon men

♪ I shed the blood of the Saxon man ♪

But in between the Charlemagne albums,

he sung heavy metal singles.

You know, we started with the Heavy Metal Christmas then

- Heavy Metal Christmas Two, with Jingle Hells. - Oh yeah.

♪ Jingle hell, jingle hell, jingle all the way

♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh ♪

He actually went number 18 on the- The American Billboard charts.

- On the billboard single charts in America. - Number 22,

and then number 22, and then from the PR of getting to number 22,

he went to number 18 in the Billboard charts.

It meant that Christopher became the oldest, now careful here,

recording artist, not somebody that wrote some music

and all of a sudden, you know, at 90

his music appears on the charts, he was 92-

91 and a half years old when he recorded,

and he became the oldest performing artist

to have ever charted.

♪ In the name of Jesus Christo, our lord

♪ On a day on Verden, no mercy given

♪ Victory for the chosen people ♪

Every single music magazine in the world...

...started to refer to him as a heavy metal star.

Right? So, he started

as somebody who wanted to sing...

...and at the end, he was respected

by every single heavy metal musician.

'One of the founding members of Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi

'presented me with the Metal Hammer Golden God award.'

I think it was probably the most memorable day

that I can remember in the whole of my life.

He was born again, he felt the energy of the place.

I remember that we were in the changing rooms with Tony Iommi

and Sir Christopher, they were talking.

They had a very long conversation in the changing room.

Sir Christopher said to him,

"You invented heavy metal, you are the father of metal."

He said. And Tony Iommi replied,

"No, you were the one that created heavy metal with your movies,

I was inspired by your movies."

Sir Christopher, "My movies? The good ones I hope!"

He always said this, "The good ones I hope!"

By 1998, I was 76-years-old

and it could well have been assumed

that my most fruitful years were behind me.

But then, something happened.

Something wonderful and quite unexpected happened.

I received an invitation to tea

at the Basil Street Hotel in Knightsbridge.

My hosts there were the head of Islamic studies

from Cambridge university, Akbar Ahmed

and his friend, the film director, Jamil Dehlavi.

They had a question for me.

"What do you know about Jinnah?"

' "Well," I replied.

'"I know that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the Baba-e-Qaum,

'forefather of the nation of Pakistan,

'the state he founded in 1947

'and became the first Governor General of.

'It was his committed endeavour to create a separate state

'for Indian Muslims.

'I believe him to have been an extraordinary man

'of determination and brilliance.

' "We should like you to play Jinnah." They replied.

'Jinnah was by far the most important film I made

in terms of its subject and the great responsibility I had as an actor.

'I am immensely proud of this picture.

'I received, really, the best reviews I've ever had.'

He was reminding you that he could do these longer parts,

these more conventional dramatic roles

and he could bring nuance and...

subtlety and, you know,

statesmanship in that particular instance, playing Jinnah.

He could bring all that to a role in a more conventional vein.

But you see...

because he'd done so many short parts,

I don't think casting directors, very often, saw him that way.

'The film was a smash hit with the critics

'but barely saw the inside of a cinema.

'It seems many could not accept the notion of a white Englishman

'playing such an important Indian icon.

'It passed largely unseen.'

Had this been the coda to my career in film,

well, it would have been a most satisfactory one.

But Jinnah was not the end.

It was the beginning of the end.

And what an end it was to be.

Almost a decade earlier, Vincent had enjoyed a magical last act revival.

After a decade of films which were often beneath him,

his final film, his final role,

his final moment on the silver screen

was a work of great beauty.

'Edward Scissorhands was an early picture

'from two of cinemas great artists.

'Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.

'It would be my good fortune to not only work with them

'but to call them friends.

'Our first picture together was, Sleepy Hollow.

'Washington Irving's tale of Ichabod Crane

'and the headless horseman.

'Their creepy but tongue-in-cheek Gothic style was, of course,

'familiar and pleasing to me but, unlike the Hammer films,

'there were no corners cut and quality was paramount.

'I would go on to appear in four more Depp-Burton collaborations

'and very fine they were too.'

I also found myself cast in what would go on to be

the two biggest cinematic franchises in the entire world

for the first decade of the new millennium.

One of these was already the biggest franchise in film history.

I would be following my friend Peter,

to become a villainous antagonist in a new Star Wars film

under the creator himself, George Lucas.

'In the original Star Wars films in the 1970's,

'Lucas had redefined what could be achieved with special effects.

'But here, at the dawn of a new century,

'he was pioneering what could be achieved

'through digital manipulation of the image.

'To be working on the cutting edge of technology was a thrill

'but it was also unfamiliar and disorienting.

'Forget the absence of other actors,

'oftentimes there weren't even sets.

'When one acts in nothing, to nothing,

'well, it was a challenge.

'But to be challenged is no bad thing.

'My high-point in this trilogy was my duel with the iconic Yoda.

'A fight that didn't take place

'with a creature that didn't exist.

Fought well you have,

my old Padawan.

This is just the beginning.

The critics weren't always kind to these films,

but George Lucas gave me a gift for which I remain eternally grateful.

The generation of children who grew up on these movies

have never even heard of Hammer films.

He unshackled me from my past

and allowed me to be something completely new to a modern audience.

My resurrection was becoming a regeneration,

and it was far from over.

Suddenly I was in demand.

'Stephen Polliakoff wanted me for Glorious 39.

'Martin Scorsese hired me for his love letter to early cinema, Hugo.'

But the greatest gift was one which had come from New Zealand.

My whole career, I had dreamt

of appearing in just one film.

He knew that The Lord of the Rings was being produced

and he always wanted to play Gandalf.

He read the books every year. He was very excited about that.

So he said, "Juan, look,

find out on the internet, put the word out

that I would like to be in that movie."

Gandalf, Saruman, whatever, as long as he was in the movie.

Christopher was someone that we had in mind for Saruman.

Not just because of his background,

and because I had grown up loving Christopher Lee's movies.

You know, he was perfect for that role.

There's no doubt about it. You'd be hard-pressed to find another actor

that would be better at bringing Saruman to life.

What surprised us is that it wasn't just a conversation where

we are trying to persuade him to, you know,

to do the role that we wanted him for.

He was super enthusiastic 'cause he was a huge Tolkien fan.

And then he said, "Well, I'd be very happy to do Saruman, of course.

This is great." But he says,

"But did you ever consider me for Gandalf?"

Which we hadn't done,

and it put us on the spot a bit 'cause I said, "Oh, really?"

He said, "Yes. I would much prefer to play Gandalf, you know?"

And I understand why 'cause Gandalf was pushing him as an actor

whereas Saruman was something, you know,

we-everyone knows he could do Saruman. He's perfect for that.

So, he said, "I prepared a scene. Can you film me?

I'd like to do Gandalf. I'd like to show you."

He auditioned for us, which is the last thing we wanted

Christopher to do, audition for the role of Gandalf.

He was good as Gandalf, but... better as Saruman.

And what we actually ended up realising

is that we had other possibilities for Gandalf.

You know, there were other actors that in different ways

could do Gandalf and we were talking to Ian

and he would be certainly top of the list.

But there is no other actor we thought of that could do Saruman.

I mean, Christopher was our only choice.

When he found out that he was gonna be in the movie,

it was like a dream come true to him.

He was a geek. He was a Lord of the Rings geek.

So that was a dream come true.

'It was an incredibly demanding shoot,

'requiring four stints of shooting in New Zealand,

'early starts and long days.

I do remember his very first day of filming...

was interesting. It was a scene from Fellowship of the Ring

where Saruman and Gandalf are walking in the Isengard garden

just talking with each other. There's just the two of them.

So we were in a local park

in Wellington shooting that sequence.

I remember part way through that first day,

um, Ian came up to me

just in between setups and he said,

"Oh... you might-

you might need to have a word with Christopher."

And I said, "Really? What? Why?" I said, "He's going great."

And Ian said, "Christopher's convinced that he's gonna get fired

at the end of the day. He's convinced he's doing a terrible job.

He's convinced himself that you don't like it,

and he's absolutely sure that he's gonna get fired

when the day's finished." Which was a terrible thing to hear

when we're only halfway through a day, so.

I just started to really reassure Christopher he was doing great.

It was quite a surprising insecurity about him.

For somebody who'd done 200, 250 films,

however many he'd done at that point, over decades of work,

he was still a very nervous, insecure actor.

It was almost like it was his first day

on the set of any film ever.

That's the way that he sort of, he came across.

The first two had come out and Christopher was great as Saruman.

Everyone loved the character, and everyone was looking forward

to that third Lord of the Rings film. But we were struggling

with the edit of it to really make the best film we possibly could.

And it was very, very long. I mean...

our first cut of Return to the King was over four hours long,

and it was just too long. And so, something-

We had to sort of, had to condense it.

We had the sequences of him in The Return of the King,

and we had to take time out, we looked at them and thought,

"Well, this is really not advancing the storyline."

It's like clearing up a loose end from The Two Towers

is how it felt a little bit, looking at it brutally.

So, a really tough decision was made that we could delete his appearance

in Return of the King, despite the fact we'd already shot it.

Chris was terribly upset about it.

And I remember saying to him at the time,

"Hello! You're essential role in Lord of the Rings.

Now you're part of Star Wars!

Relax!" You know?

He was thrilled to be in all of the new popular movies

that were popular with, you know?

I mean, the movies, he was always in popular movies.

Even the Hammer films were popular pictures,

but they weren't mainstream popular, like blockbuster popular.

And when you get into working with George Lucas

and working with Peter Jackson, I mean, now you're talking about

these are huge budget movies that are seen by millions of people

in the world over, and it's the top of the heap.

You really can't get much higher than that.

And I think he was really thrilled at that point in his career

to say that, "OK, I did this. I went from here,

I went from... tiny parts in swashbuckler movies

in the early '50s to, you know,

the top of the heap in playing with the most respected directors,

Scorsese included, in the world."

He was very aware that these were big name directors,

but he seemed to forget that he was a big name actor or at any rate,

he had a huge heritage stretching back several decades,

which is why they wanted him.

But it did constitute an Indian summer.

The Lord of the Rings, quite rightly,

won many awards.

And then I started to as well.

'I realised that there comes a point at which they give you awards

'merely for still being alive.

'I was very moved and grateful for all of them.

'But there is a none-too-coded message attached

'to every Lifetime Achievement Award,

'which suggests that one might no longer be considered

'the promising newcomer, and that one's potential might now be spent.

'The Old Pipe and Slippers Award.'

The knighthood meant a lot to him.

He was a little disappointed that it wasn't the Queen.

I think Prince Charles knighted him,

but... still, it meant a lot.

It meant a lot.

To receive the honour of knighthood,

Sir Christopher Lee for services to drama and to charity.

So, what role would you like to be most remembered for?

Probably Jinnah.

I think that's the most challenging

and important part I've ever had.

There have been others, of course. The Man with the Golden Gun,

and of course in The Lord of the Rings, Saruman,

and Count Dooku.

What's important to me is that...

it seems that now I'm known

to every generation, and after all,

that's what it's all about.

Survival.

Thank you very much for speaking to us.

So there you have it. A knight of the realm

but still the King of Horror.

The King of what?

Horror! Don't say that, dear. I'm not.

But we remember you for- But I'm not the King of Horror.

I haven't done a horror film for 34 years.

- Can I get you to say this on camera for me? - Yes!

And then we can put it straight.

Please don't refer to me as the King of Horror.

The day before he passed away, we thought he was coming home.

He was being himself. I thought he looked good, right?

I thought he was going home. The doctor said, "He's fine.

He looks good. He looks well." And that night he said, "Oh!

The Lord of the Rings is on TV, right?

So, we'll watch The Lord of the Rings with the nurses, right?

I'll explain to you how the movie is." Because he loved the movie.

So, he watched that night The Lord of the Rings with the nurses,

and we went home and we were already thinking,

"OK, he's coming back."

Then that night,

all of a sudden, I was asleep

and I saw Christina stressed

and saying, "Daddy is gone."

And it was a very-

It actually, it hit us really hard

because we thought that he-

I actually thought that he was eternal.

I thought that he would...

he would go past 100. I really did think so.

So, it was a shock. It was more,

I thought, "Well, he's in hospital.

He's got some respiratory problems." But he's always had problems.

He always had things.

But he just passed away. That was it.

It was peaceful.

He didn't suffer. He just went to sleep.

I was coming off stage,

got a message from Gitte on my answering machine.

I had friends in my dressing room who'd come to have a drink,

and I suddenly burst into tears and told everyone to leave the room.

I go to London.

Now part of me always has in the back of my mind,

"I must give Christopher a call." You know? I'm still not quite-

'Cause London just, somehow when I'm in London, I get that thing,

"Give Christopher a call" gets triggered in me.

And so I still haven't got quite used to the idea

that he's not there anymore.

Knowing him was a...

one of the perks of being in the movie business.

I miss him greatly.

Christopher was certainly, certainly one of those people

that was very much a part of me.

Very deeply much a part of me.

I feel...

just gratified that he was so much part of my life.

And, uh...

...he made my life that much better.

Last time I saw Christopher?

It was about four months before he died.

I went to visit him in his flat in Cadogan Square.

I just felt, I don't know, I got emotional

because he was talking about dying and I was saying,

"Will you stop it?" You know?

"Jesus, Chris!

I didn't come to see you to get depressed." You know?

Actually, he became pretty funny after that.

And that's the last time I saw him.

I really, I really loved him.

I was delighted and honoured to know him,

and I miss him terribly.

What really choked me up was the next day

I looked up something about him

and it said, "Christopher Lee WAS an actor..."

They changed the 'is' to 'was' in 24 hours

and that really broke my heart.

Well, there we go.

Our time draws to a close

and the grave beckons me once more.

I do hope you have enjoyed this exhumation

as much as I have.

Good evening.

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