Christopher Lee: The actor and hunter of Nazi war criminals
Becoming a successful actor is difficult enough in and of itself, but the life and times of Christopher Lee made his legendary career on film and television seem like little more than a hobby he was very good at that occupied a great deal of his time, or at least that’s how it looks relative to a life defined by countless extracurricular achievements.
As if being one of genre’s cinema’s foremost titans to play the role of Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Mummy during the peak of his Hammer years wasn’t enough, Lee also brought Saruman to life in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, embodied the title character with ferocious charisma in Rasputin the Mad Monk, lent his signature gravitas to a galaxy far, far away in the Star Wars prequels, and opposed James Bond as Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun.
He was also fluent in Italian, German, Spanish, and French, proficient in Greek, Russian, and Swedish, once said he was “conversationally fluent” in Mandarin, and was familiar with Latin. In addition, Lee was a skilled fencer and swordsman who took part in more on-screen swordfights than any other actor in film history, could trace his family lineage all the way back to King Charlemagne, and even fronted a heavy metal band while he was in his late 80s.
All that, and he was related to Bond creator Ian Fleming through marriage, with the two becoming friends and golfing partners. In fact, Lee’s stint as part of a clandestine organisation during World War II is widely accepted as one of the major inspirations behind the iconic spy character, making it all the more coincidental that he would end up serving as one of 007’s many antagonists when he made the jump from page to screen.
During the war, Lee was affiliated with the Special Operations Executive, with one of his many assignments being the tracking down and apprehension of Nazi war criminals. His multilingual skills made him ideal for the task at hand, with the actor outlining his duties per Spy Scape: “We were given dossiers of what they’d done and told to find them, interrogate them as much as we could, and hand them over to the appropriate authority.”
He never divulged too much about his wartime efforts, though, famously downplaying his contributions to state: “Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read into that what they like.”
Regardless of how little he was willing to give away, it’s irrefutable that he was instructed by his superiors to bring in Nazis who were on the run from the authorities following the end of the conflict, all of which came before he’d even taken up acting as a profession and started racking up the myriad of on and off-camera accomplishments that would ultimately define his multi-talented legacy.
