When Saruman, Middle Earth’s White Wizard, stood atop Isengard and looked down at his army of Orcs, frozen in that moment in sparkling white, he seemed immortal.
But when have fantasies come to pass except on celluloid.
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, Britan’s master of the macabre, hailed as the stuff of legend for his role as Dracula in outrageous horror classics, seen by later generations as the White Wizard Saruman in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ franchise, and as the evil turncoat Count Dooku in ‘Star Wars’, died at a London hospital aged 93.
According to his death certificate, he had been undergoing treatment for respiratory problems.
From the late 1950s to the 1970s, Lee played characters including Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Mummy for Hammer Films, and made memorable appearances in a series of blockbuster movies later in his career.
“The loneliness of evil”, is what Lee called the sense of pitifulness he brought in the monsters he portrayed, and despite being a master of the horror genre, Lee didn’t even like the word.
It implies something nauseating, revolting, disgusting - which one sees too often these days. I prefer the word ‘fantasy’.
– Christopher Lee, to the New York Times, 2002
Both celebrities and politicians took to Twitter to hail Lee.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron offered his condolences and mentioned that Lee was a World War 2 veteran. Lee served in Britain’s Royal Air Force in the war and later took up acting after a cousin suggested it. London Mayor Boris Johnson called Lee “one of the greatest British actors and a master of the macabre.”
Lee played the villain Scaramanga in ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, Sir Roger Moore who played James Bond in the movie had this to say.
Sir Moore also offered condolences to Lee’s wife of 54 years, the former Danish model Birgit Kroncke, their daughter Christina and her husband, Juan Francisco Aneiros Rodriguez.
His Lord of the Rings co-star Elijah Wood also tweeted his condolences.
As did comedian Omid Djalili.
Scott Weinberg’s bevy of tweets in Lee’s memory were an obituary of sorts by themselves.
Actor James Franco and musician Bryan Adams posted their tributes to Lee on Instagram.
These tweets by his fans sums up a minuscule part of the versatility that Christopher Lee possessed as an actor and as a person.
IMDb says, Lee has a lead role in the yet-to-be released “Angels in Notting Hill” and would have made an appearance in “The 11th“, which still has to go into production.
Lee had a lifelong interest in music, and his single “Jingle Hell” released in 2013 entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 22, and made him the oldest living artist to enter the charts.
His film debut was in 1947, and his career eventually spanned over 200 movies.
India’s older generation remembers Lee as the man who the ghoulish Muhammad Ali Jinnah resembled, those of us who were born later would just say,
Hail Darth Tyranus! Brave Sith Lord!
May The Force Be With You Forever!
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)