Happy birthday Christopher Lee!

[strange_complex]

Rah! Today is Christopher Lee's birthday, and he is eighty-two! Impressive stuff for a man with three movies either just finished or about to start production on his IMDb page.

So this is my public wish for many happy returns to him (and lots more excellent films, please!). I also intend to mark the day by watching The Wicker Man tonight on DVD.

Here are some fun facts about him with which to impress your friends:

• He appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the actor with the most ever screen credits to his name.
  
• He has also performed the most ever on-screen sword-fights
  
• His mother was an Italian countess, from the Carandini family (his full name, in fact, is Christopher Frank Carandini Lee).
  
• Ian Fleming was his step-cousin, and apparently Lee was Fleming's first choice to play 'Dr. No' in the first Bond film. (Joseph Wiseman was eventually chosen instead, but Christopher Lee still got his 'shot' at Bond villain fame when he played Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun.)
  
• Spookily, he shares his birthday with Vincent Price, while Peter Cushing was born on May 26th!
  
• He used to live next door to Boris Karloff.

Comments

[superdus.livejournal.com]

Wow! He certainly does sound like an actor of real pedigree!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Channel 4 ranked him at no. 31 in their '100 Greatest Movie Stars' (http://www.channel4.co.uk/film/newsfeatures/microsites/M/moviestars/results/results_100_96.jsp) - above e.g. Marilyn Monroe (no. 39), Michael Caine (no. 44) or Gerard Depardieu (no. 90).

Mind you, it was ranked on the basis of votes from Joe Public, so who's to say it counts for anything!