He had been hospitalised at a London Hospital recently for respiratory problems and heart problems.
The decision to release the news days after was based on his wife’s desire to inform family members first. The couple had been married for over 50 years.
As well as his career in film, Lee also released a series of heavy metal albums, including Charlemagne: The Omens of Death. He was knighted in 2009 for services to drama and charity and was awarded the Bafta fellowship in 2011.
Born in Westminster in 1922, Lee found fame playing Count Dracula in a series of films for Hammer throughout the 1960s, and continued to play bad guys for the rest of his career.
He was a terrific Bond villain in The Man With the Golden Gun, while perhaps his greatest performance was as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, both of which made it into our list of his 10 greatest movies.
In more recent years he played Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels, and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films.
He has more than 280 credits to his name on IMDB, making memorable appearances in the likes of The Devil Rides Out, Death Line, Race to Witch Mountain, Gremlins 2, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass and Hugo.
In 2011, he returned to Hammer with a role in the Hilary Swank thriller The Resident although he generally tried to avoid the horror genre in later years. “There have been some absolutely ghastly films recently, physically repellent,” he said. “What we did was fantasy, fairy tales - no real person can copy what we did. But they can do what Hannibal Lecter does, if they’re so inclined, people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen, and for that reason, I think such films are dangerous.”
 |
| Iconic: Christopher Lee in the Hammer Horror franchise |
