.:: ON THIS DAY ::. - Christopher Lee

Fuck yeah my dudes and dudettes, today would have been the birthday of Sir Christopher Lee, who was born on the 27th May, 1922! Never before and never again shall there be a dude quite as righteous and radical as Lee, a famed actor with many an honourable film role under his belt, as well as a history as a spy, a fencer, an opera singer, and then some! So let us begin this celebration of one of the coolest dudes to ever hit the screen.

So Lee was clearly destined for greater things from birth, given that he descended from Emperor Charlemange of the Holy Roman Empire, on his mother's side, who herself was an Italian countess. His grandparents were also responsible for bringing opera to Australia, which is pretty neat, and he was also related to Robert E. Lee the Confederate general, which is a little less neat.

As a child growing up Lee saw some pretty bat-shit things, in fact when Eugen Weidmann, the last person in France to be publicly execute by the guillotine in Paris, Lee was there to see it, aged just 17 years old. A decade or so before that though he also met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the men most remembered for assassinating Rasputin. Years later, Lee would take on the role of Rasputin in the 1966 film Rasputin the Mad Monk.

When World War II broke out, a barely twenty year old Lee enlisted into the Royal Air Force, but before long the dude was being picked up by the Long Range Desert Patrol, a sort've proto-SAS, who sent him on all kinds of mad missions that results in some crazy fuckin' stories to tell; with the LRDP he fought Nazis in Africa, helped to retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny amongst his own men, contracted Malaria six times, and climbed Mt. Vesuvius just three days before it erupted.

His work with the LRDP was so commendable that he was then moved to Churchill's immensely elite and super secretive service the Special Operations Executive, an espionage unit nicknamed The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Hell, I hear you ask, why hasn't this been made into a film? Well that would be because despite sometimes receiving five missions a day during his extensive time with the Ministry, almost all of these missions are still highly classified. Lee was therefore never able to share any anecdotes, but what he did tell people is that he saw MANY people killed right in front of him. And if you're thinking well we already have a film series like this and its called James Bond - fun fuckin' fact for yas, Lee was step-cousin to Ian Flemming, the creator of James Bond - and was his first choice for the role!

Following the end of the war, Lee spent a couple of years hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects, which should have been no feat given his history, his ability to speak French, Italian, German, Spanish, and a little bit of Russian, Greek and Swedish, AND his commendations for bravery in Britain, Polan, Czech and Yugoslavia. Finally though, he decided he was done with conflict and decided to take a crack at acting - aged 25.

Year, for reals, he did ALL of this shit before turning a quarter of a century. The man is, by all accounts, a genuine, bona fide legend worthy of the title.

Lee would go on to become a hugely popular actor, earning himself numerous records that shan't be broken by anyone anytime soon. During his time acting, he appeared in 259 TV shows and movies, he was the tallest leading actor at 6'5", he's appeared in the most films with sword fights than anyone else - 17, if you're interested. Of course there's then all of his prolific roles, which include his multiple portrayals of Dracula for Hammer, as well as The Mummy and Frankenstein's monster, then there's Saruman, Count Dooku, Fu Manchu, Rasputin, Lord Summerisle, Mephistopheles, James Bond villain Scaramanga, and even Death himself. Fuck, his portrayal of Rochefort in The Three Musketeers also made the character's eye-patch an established part of the character,despite it never appearing in the book. But despite his history of hard work and his war hero status, don't think it was ever easy for Lee starting out - in fact he received permanent damage to one of his fingers during a sword fight with a drunken Erol Flynn during one of his earlier productions, though Lee didn't make much of a fuss and carried on. However when Lee accidentally cut Flynn's wig later on, Flynn stormed off and refused to come out of his trailer until Lee had apologised. Wanker.

Despite his impressive catalogue of roles, Lee was no stranger to regret and missed opportunity, in fact he turned down roles for Tarkin in Star Wars (which of course went to his best friend Peter Sellers), Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Dr Loomis in Halloween, a role which he claimed was his number one regret in his acting career.

More modern audiences will most likely know him best from his work as Saruman, but what you may not know is just how huge a fan Lee was of Tolkien he was - in fact he was the only person in the film's production to have met the man, when he bumped into him randomly at a pub and fanboy'd out, resulting in an amused Tolkien giving him his blessing to play Gandalf in any Lord of the Rings movies that may be made in the future. There is also the infamous anecdote of Peter Jackson describing Saruman's death scene to Lee, in which he tries to explain to him the noise a man being stabbed in the back would make, to which Lee gravely stated that he had witnessed people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what it sounded like. So metal, yo.

Oh yeah, speaking of metal - the dude fucking LOVED metal. Like how much did he love metal? Enough to release his own heavy metal album in 2010, and then a Christmas heavy metal album a few years later, aged 88. The album entitled Charlemange: By the Sword and the Cross, was as you may have guessed, about his ancestor. Its release not only made him the oldest metal artist, but also the oldest artist to hit the billboard. And he had a country album, too.

So with such an exciting life of adventure and thrills, Lee must've been a bit've a ladies man right? Absolutely not folks, in fact he was married to the same woman from 1961 until his death in 2015, Danish artist and model Birgit Krøncke. Before that he had been engaged to the daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen, a woman by the name of Henriette von Rosen. The Count wasn't a fan of Lee, to the point he hired private detectives to dig up dirt on him, and he even refused to let their wedding go ahead unless Lee got the blessing of the King of Sweded, which of course he fucking did. So what happened between Lee and the Countess, was it some juicy, saucy, soap opera style drama that ended their relationship? Nope, being the sweetheart he was, Lee simply didn't feel he was good enough for her, stating he didn't want her "pitched into the dishevelled world of an actor", and that she "deserved better". Aw.

In 2009 Lee was knighted for, well, all of the above really, can you honestly pinpoint one of the incredible things he did as a reason for knighthood above all others? Sadly just six years later Lee would pass away at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on the 7th June 2015, but up until this point the dude was still working as an actor. His last film release he was alive for was Saruman in the final Hobbit film, though three films were also released posthumous. HIs last voice actor roles were of Saruman in The Lego hobbit too, and, I can't believe I'm saying this, the voice of Ansem the Wise in Kingdom Hearts. His voice also appeared in Deus Ex Machina 2 posthumous, but frankly a Kingdom Hearts voice credit is a far superior bookend.

So that's that then, the incredibly wild life and times of Christopher Lee, somehow condensed down to a single article. Rest in peace you God amongst men, you.

Fuck it, here's a few extra facts that didn't make the cut:

- He shared a birthday, albeit 11 years apart, with Vincent Price

- He was a world champion fencer, had a stint at opera singing, and was a fuckin' good golfer.

- He unknowingly narrated a porno in the 70s.

- He's on the cover to Paul McCartney's Band on the Run album.

- He did audiobooks! You can listen to him read The Fog, The Exorcist, Dracula (of course), and The Phantom of the Opera, amongst others.