Most people know Christopher
Lee for his work in the movies, specifically for his work in
The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and of course,
his portrayal of Dracula in 10 films. But he was much
more than an actor. He was a man who lived
life to the fullest. He was knighted, hunted
Nazis in World War II, saved lives, earned
several world records, and released several heavy
metal albums in the 2000s. And that's just a partial list. Today, we're going to explore
the life of Christopher Lee and why he's the most
interesting man in the world. But before we get
started, subscribe to our channel, Weird History. Leave a comment and let us know
what you think about this video and who you'd like
us to cover next. [MUSIC PLAYING] Sir Christopher Frank Carandini
Lee was born on May 27, 1922 in Belgravia London, England. Even if he were never
to become an actor, his life still would be
considered an adventure. It's almost like he lived
the life of Forrest Gump if Forrest was
played by James Bond. We all know Christopher
Lee was an actor. What's possibly more interesting
is his storied military career. At 18 in 1939, Lee
volunteered to fight for the Finnish forces
during the Winter War when World War II broke out. By 1941, Lee volunteered
for the Royal Air Force where he felt he could
make a greater impact. But after being diagnosed
with a damaged optic nerve, he was told he would
never be allowed to fly again, so he joined the
Royal Air Force Intelligence branch. It was here that
Lee was attached to the special
operations executive and the long-range desert
group, the precursor of the Special Air Service. Lee never got into the
details of his time with the special forces,
but here's what we know. While in the
Special Air Service, he fought in North Africa,
and then later moved on to Winston Churchill's
Special Operations Executive. For his final few
months of service, he was seconded to the Central
Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects where
he hunted Nazi criminals throughout Europe. Decades later, when asked
about his military service in a press junket, Lee
told the interviewer, can you keep a secret? The journalist eagerly said yes. Lee leaned in, lowered his
voice, and said, so can I. [MUSIC PLAYING] When Christopher Lee retired
for the military in 1946 at 25-- yes, he accomplished
all of his previously mentioned military heroics
by the time he was 25-- he wasn't sure what he
wanted to do with his life. One day during lunch with his
cousin Nicolo Carandini, then the Italian
ambassador to Britain, Lee was recounting his
time in the military. Carandini then
casually suggested, why don't you become
an actor, Christopher? And thus began his foray into
the pages of the Guinness Book of World Records. In 1948, Lee's first year as an
actor, he was in eight films. By 2007, Guinness World
Records honored him with the title of most screen
credits held by any living actor, with 244 TV and movie
credits under his belt. By the time he passed
away on June 7, 2015, he added 24 more
credits to that list. Lee got his second world record
for being the tallest leading actor, standing at
6' 5", which he later went on to share when Vince
Vaughn got his SAG card. Lee's final Guinness
title was achieved for being the actor in the
most films with a sword fight. Lee dueled in 17 films
with foils, swords, and even billiard cues. Of course, this record also
includes his light saber fight as Count Dooku in Star Wars. Christopher Lee was
quite the sportsman when he attended Wellington College. He played cricket,
rugby, football, and held top ranking in fencing. Christopher Lee's family tree
is as impressive as they come. With his pedigree,
it's no surprise that he went on to lead an
incredibly interesting life. His mother, Countess
Estelle Marie, was an Edwardian beauty
who was painted by Sir John Lavery, Oswald
Birley, Olive Snell, and sculpted by Clare Sheridan. Her lineage can be traced
to King Charlemagne. Lee's family even bears
Charlemagne's coat of arms. Lee was also a distant
relative of a couple of other famous men, American
Civil War General Robert E Lee, and English astronomer
and mathematician John Lee. And as if his family tree
needed to get any cooler, Lee is also a step cousin
of Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels. Lee's mother divorced
his father and remarried Harcourt George Sainte
Croix Rose, Fleming's uncle. Interestingly enough, Lee
would later work with Fleming on the James Bond film, The
Man with the Golden Gun, as Francisco Scaramang, the
main villain and assassin who was identified by his golden
gun and superfluous nipple. Fleming originally wanted him
to play another bond role. According to Lee in this
interview with Total Film, Fleming wanted his step cousin
to portray a Spectre villain. "He wanted me to play Dr. No. But by the time he got
around to remembering to tell the producers, they'd
already cast someone else. Spilled milk. And unfortunately,
Ian wasn't with us when I did Scaramanga,
who was not remotely like the character in the book. In Fleming's novel, he's
just a West Indian thug. In the film, he's charming,
elegant, amusing, lethal. I played him like the
dark side of bond." It could be said that
Christopher Lee had a knack for being
at the right place at the right time
for most of his life. At 17, during the
summer of 1939, Lee was traveling
through France to meet up with his sister in
the French Riviera when she was on
holiday with friends. On his way there, he took
a detour through Paris, where he stayed with the
journalist Webb Miller. During his stay with
Miller, Lee found himself outside the prison walls of
Saint Pierre at Versailles for the public execution
of German criminal and serial murderer
Eugen Weidmann. Naturally, because everything
in Lee's life was hard core, Weidmann's method of
execution was by guillotine. The scene was so
scandalous and hampered with hysterical
behavior by spectators, French President Albert
Lebrun immediately banned all future
public executions. Witnessing Weidmann's
June 17 execution must have stirred up
a dark interest in Lee on the subject matter,
because he ended up studying the history
of public executions. He also claimed
he knew the names of every public executioner
in England dating back to the 15th century. Early into his acting
career, Christopher Lee had to make a decision. Either continue down the path
of his young career as an actor, or become an opera singer. Around 1948 or '49,
Lee says he was approached by the world
famous tenor Jussi Bjorling while in Sweden. Bjorling witnessed
Lee casually singing with a bunch of students from
Stockholm, walked up to him and told him, you don't want
to waste your time acting. You've got a voice. You have the instrument. You have the sound. You should be a singer. Bjorling then
offered to train Lee, but the actor would have to pay
for his own housing and food in Stockholm. Lee was a starving
artist, and said he had very little
money in those days, so he had to turn down the
offer, a decision he regretted until his death. Lee just didn't stumble
into opera though. Singing was in his blood. His great grandparents founded
the first opera company in Australia in the 1850s. His London-born
great grandmother became the most famous
singer in Australia. Her name was Marie Carandini. When Lee was on military leave
in Naples some time in 1944, he climbed Mount Vesuvius a mere
three days before it erupted. You can imagine him saying smoke
rises from the mountain of Doom Vesuvius. The hour grows late and
Gandalf the gray rides to Isengard seeking my counsel. The mountain--
Vesuvius, not Doom-- erupted on March 17, 1944, about
four years into World War II. That was the last time
the volcano acted up. The 1916 death of
Grigori Rasputin, the infamous Russian
mystic, is highly contested in some circles. Here's what we know for certain. Rasputin died of three gunshots,
one of which was at close range to his forehead. Beyond this, little is
certain about his death, and the circumstances
of his murder have been the subject of
considerable speculation. The story goes that he was
poisoned, shot, beaten, and then finally, drowned. The assassins
responsible are thought to be Prince Yusupov and
Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. Although Lee starred as Rasputin
in Rasputin the Mad Monk, his connection to the
assassination goes deeper. Lee actually met
Yusupov and Pavlovich as a child due to his
mother's royal connections. Christopher Lee
was a longtime fan of The Lord of the Rings
author JRR Tolkien. As a matter of fact,
Lee said he used to read all of Tolkien's books
once a year, just because he liked the writing so much. Lee is also the only Lord
of the Rings cast member to have ever met the
man behind the books. As Lee tells the story, he was
out with a group of friends in Oxford sometime
in the '50s, and they stopped in The Eagle
and Child for a pint. Coincidentally, this happened
to be Tolkien's local pub. As we know by now, Christopher
Lee had a voice, a voice so bad ass he could have become
a legit world class opera singer in his mid-20s. He chose the path of
an actor, but he never let his dream of
becoming a singer die. Because in 2010, when
he was 88 years old, he released his first
heavy metal album. The album, his debut,
was titled Charlemagne by The Sword and
the Cross, and it tells the story of Charlemagne,
the first Holy Roman Emperor, his distant relative. To be fair, it was more
of a symphonic metal. Lots of chanting and
dramatic readings. Think Music From
"The Elder" by Kiss. In 2013, he released a follow-up
album called Charlemagne, Omens of Death, and that was a true
heavy metal, nay, power metal album. The album's music was arranged
by Judas Priest's Richie Faulkner, and at 90 years old,
Lee was the oldest heavy metal performer in history. And if you think he'd gone into
the world of metal as a lark, you'd be wrong. Lee issued several other
legit dark metal releases, including 2014's Metal Night
and a couple of dark Christmas EPs with his metal versions
of The Little Drummer Boy and Silent Night. Christopher Lee and
Hammer Films go way back. It was with Hammer Films
that Lee became something of a household name with his
portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1958 classic Dracula. In fact, Lee portrayed
several iconic characters from Hammer Films, including The
Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, and Rasputin over
eight of their films. While he has Hammer Films
to thank for propelling him from an extra on the
bottom of the call sheet to the leading man, Lee wanted
to leave the British film company. He grew bored with
the Dracula character and felt the scripts were weak. Once Hammer's executives found
out Lee wanted to move on, they guilted him into staying
by explaining how many employees would be out of work if Lee
stop starring in Hammer's films. In short, Lee was
emotionally blackmailed into reprising the lead role
in Dracula, Prince of Darkness. However, Lee starred in
the movie on his terms, and because he felt
the script was so bad, Lee refused to utter
one line of dialogue. Instead, he hissed and
yelled incoherently throughout the film. Christopher Lee played
some pretty dark characters in his career as an actor,
Dracula, a mummy, Count Dooku, Rasputin, Saruman, even
Death in a small role. And we know about his work
as a black metal singer, so it's no surprise
that after decades of making a living
surrounding himself with so much
sinisterism, people began suspecting Lee was actually a
practitioner of the black arts. It was even rumored
that Lee owned the largest collection
of books on the occult in the entire world. 20,000 books, to be exact. By the early 70s, Christopher
Lee was Draculaed out. He had played the count
nine times by 1973, and he wanted to break
out of the horror mold he had found himself typecast in. Then Lee met screenwriter
Anthony Shaffer. The two hit it off
and they decided to work on a project
together, something in the realm of horror, but
without the blood or gore. Shaffer came across
a novel called Ritual about the sacrificial
murder of a local child. Lee and Shaffer
paid 15,000 pounds for the rights of
the book, and Shaffer wrote the screenplay for
what would eventually become The Wicker Man. The only problem was
that the film's budget was small, only 500,000 pounds. In 1973, 500,000 pounds was
a pretty good chunk of money, but with the way The
Wicker Man had to be shot, 500,000 pounds wasn't
going to cut it. Lee was excited about
the script though. He loved the idea of starring
in a psychological thriller that wouldn't require him
to wear capes or fangs. He loved the idea
of the movie so much he decided to forgo his paycheck
so that the film would have a little extra in its budget. If you're the international
man of bad assery and darkness like
Christopher Lee, English is definitely
not your only language. Lee was fluent in
five languages, Italian, French, Spanish,
German, and obviously, mastered English to a
Shakespearean degree. He was also proficient in
Swedish, Russian, and Greek. Not only did his proficiency
in speaking German help him hunt down Nazis
during World War II, but it also allowed him to
dub the original voice of Thor in the Danish 1986
animated film Valhalla, and of King Haggard in both
the English and German versions of the 1982 animated
adaptation of The Last Unicorn. Even though Lee is considered
the master of the macabre, it doesn't mean that he
didn't have a humorous side. On March 25 in 1978,
he hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live. And in a 2005 interview
with Total Film, he said it was the greatest
thing he'd ever done. He was very funny in
every skit he was in, but his best bit was when
he introduced Meatloaf as the episode's musical guest. Lee intentionally muffed
up Meatloaf's intro, referring to him as Loaf. According to Lee, Meatloaf was
legitimately furious at him for disrespecting his name. Take a close look
at the cover art of Paul McCartney and the Wings
third album, Band on the Run. Does the guy in the back of the
photo at the 1 o'clock position look familiar? The photographer,
Clive Arrowsmith, admitted on his website that
Paul hosted quite the party for the participants
of the shoot. By the time Lee, Michael
Parkinson, Kenny Lynch, James Coburn, Clement Freud,
John Conte, and the band assembled for the
photo, they were in what Arrowsmith
called a substance haze. Arrowsmith rented
the wrong spotlight, he only brought
two rolls of film, the film was the wrong type
for the lighting conditions, and all of his subjects were
blitzed out of their skulls. They were so bombed and
having such a good time, Arrowsmith couldn't
get them to stay still for the two seconds he
needed for the focused shot. They were laughing,
joking around, and kept falling
over each other. He finally instructed them to
either lean against the wall or hold onto each other
to keep their balance. While this might be
a lifelong highlight of an experience
for you or me, it was probably just another
day in the fascinating life of Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee died
in a London hospital on June 7, 2015
at the age of 93. His wife of 50 years, the former
Danish model Birgit Kroencke, was by his side. It's said his passing
was a peaceful one. Calling someone the most
interesting man in the world is difficult. We're
interested in what you think. Who do you think is the most
interesting man in the world and why? So thanks for watching. Let us know what you think
in the comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other stories on our weird history.
