Christopher Lee
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PAGEIn a career spanning over
four decades, Christopher Lee has entertained audiences
in a wide variety of roles, portraying characters that
range from the diabolical and sinister to the wise and
elderly, justly earning a reputation as one of the
world's most versatile actors.
With his deep
voice and commanding presence, Christopher Lee has
portrayed such characters as the artist Georges Seurat
in Moulin Rouge (1952), the diabolical Count Dracula in
Dracula (1958), the sedate Sir Henry Baskerville in The
Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the sinister Grigori
Rasputin in Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966), the shrewd
Mycroft Holmes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
(1970), and the incomparable Sherlock Holmes in both
Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1990) and Sherlock
Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls (1991). In
1973 Mr. Lee starred in the critically acclaimed film
The Wicker Man, which was recently rated one of the top
100 films of the 20th century by the British Film
Institute.
More recently he starred as Mohammed
Ali Jinnah in the film Jinnah (1998). In December of
this year he will appear as Saruman in J.R. Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings and in Spring 2002 he will appear in
Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones. Earlier this
year he was made a Commander of the Order of the British
Empire.
TSM: When did you first decide to
write your autobiography?[Tall, Dark and
Gruesome]
CL: Well, it was in fact the
publisher, W.H. Allen, who approached me and suggested
that I should. The first autobiography came out in 1976,
in hardback, and then in paperback in 1977. Then the
second one, which was merely a continuation, you might
say, under the same title, came out in Britain in 1997
in hardback and then in paperback in 1998, and in the
U.S. in hardback and paperback in 1999.
So many
people over the years have said to me that I should
write an autobiography, so I did. I guess I've lived a
long time, been to a lot of places, seen a lot of
extraordinary things in my life, met a lot of
extraordinary people, had a lot of remarkable
experiences etc., both professionally, as an actor, as
well as privately, as a person.
TSM: In
your autobiography there is a reference to your meeting
as a child with two of Rasputin's assassins-Prince
Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri
Pavlovich.
CL: Two of the conspirators,
yes. I was pulled out of bed in the middle of the night
by my mother. She said there are two people here in
black tie and tuxedos, you will remember having met
them-but that's about all. And then of course years
later it meant a great deal. But I can't remember their
faces. Then I played the part [Rasputin in Rasputin: The
Mad Monk] in '65, although it was not correctly played,
because even then Prince Yusupov was alive and he would
always bring legal action against anybody who used his
name or his wife's name in a film. Which is why, of
course, in 1935 he succeeded in getting the MGM film
with the three Barrymores taken off. He did in fact
scrutinize and authorize every page of the script of
Hammer, although the ending was incorrect. Some of it
was correct, but not completely.
It's a very
strange story because nobody has ever explained
Rasputin, really. I met his daughter in 1976 in Beverly
Hills, Maria. She was charming. I've got a picture of
myself with her. She said that I looked like him, which
startled me slightly because I'm taller than he was and
my eyes are dark brown and his were grey-blue. And when
I mentioned that she said, "Oh, no, what I meant was the
expression." I didn't pursue that. I wasn't quite sure
what she meant.
TSM: You played Georges
Seurat in the film Moulin Rouge. What are your memories
of that film?
CL: Well, it was the only
time I ever worked with John Huston, which of course was
a marvelous experience. And of course I worked with José
Ferrer, who became a great friend. I played in another
film with him later on, which he directed, called
Cockleshell Heroes.
I only had one scene really
as Seurat and they didn't say anything about the style
of painting that he invented, Pointillism. The scene was
at the Café Deux Magots, which still exists, of course,
in Paris, and we used the actual café-dressed it up a
bit to make it seem more of the period (clothes and
everything). And as we rehearsed and played this scene
the noise was beyond belief because of all the Paris
traffic and all the tourists taking pictures. I couldn't
hear what José Ferrer was saying, and he couldn't hear
what I was saying.
TSM: That must have
been disconcerting.
CL: Oh, it was very
disconcerting. It was very difficult to do and it was
also terribly hot. But John [Huston] was marvelous. He
said, "Just be yourself," and I didn't really know what
that meant but I went ahead and played it. I've got some
lovely pictures taken by Robert Capa, the most famous
photographer of the time-one of the most famous of all
time-who was killed when a land-mine exploded during one
of the wars he was covering. It was either in Korea or
in Vietnam. I can't remember.
TSM: I think
in Vietnam.
CL: His brother is still alive
in New York. But he's very old. I've got some of the
photographs Robert Capa took, not all the ones I wanted
but some of them of myself with John Huston in
rehearsal, and with José Ferrer. They are not stills
from the film. These were all taken during rehearsal by
Capa. He was not the still photographer for the film.
Eliot Elisofon was the still photographer-also a very
famous photographer for Life.
TSM: Your
good friend was in it as well.
CL:
Peter.
TSM: Yes, Peter
Cushing.
CL: But we hadn't
met.
TSM: You hadn't met at the time of
the film?
CL: No, we
hadn't.
TSM: What are your memories of
him?
CL: Oh, well you know I could talk
for an hour about that. He was a great human being, a
wonderful man, and a superb actor. And a very, very dear
friend whom I miss terribly.
TSM: He was a
great Sherlockian as well.
CL: Oh, indeed
he was.
TSM: He designed the logo for the
Sherlock Holmes Society of London.
CL: Oh,
yes. He was a very fine artist and draftsman and
painter, none of which I am. But he was outstanding. He
painted a lot with one of England's most distinguished
painters, a man called Edward Seago. They knew each
other very well indeed. Peter lived in Kent on the
seashore, Whitstable. And I knew him of course, and his
wife, early on. I met him in 1957, which is 44 years
ago, and we formed this relationship. You might say we
forged it-it became a bond between us. We had the same
sense of humor, of fun, and of the ridiculous. We loved
the animated cartoons. We had a great affection for
Sylvester the Cat and Yosemite Sam in particular. We
loved those, and we used to imitate them to each other
in all our conversations. He was a great ornithologist
and I used to send him postcards from all around the
world, inventing totally untrue species of birds saying,
"Just discovered last nesting pair. Your flight's been
arranged. The room has been reserved. What's keeping
you?" So we kept in touch all the
time.
TSM: So are you interested in the
Sherlock Holmes stories?
CL: Oh yes, I've
read every one. Not only Sherlock Holmes. Also I think
that, in a totally different context, Conan Doyle wrote
the finest book ever written about what they call the
noble art, or 'the Fancy' as they called it in Regency
times-bare knuckle fighting. Rodney Stone, what a book
that is. And the two greatest historical novels I think
I've ever read in my life, Sir Nigel and The White
Company.
TSM: The White Company was
brilliant.
CL: Wonderful! Wouldn't it make
a wonderful movie?
TSM: It definitely
would. In fact, it's a great pity that Sherlock Holmes
has overshadowed his other great
works.
CL: Well, Brigadier Gerard, they
did that once but it didn't work. And of course they've
done The Lost World to death and it's never worked
properly.
TSM: Because they never stayed
faithful to the book.
CL: No. Well this is
the story of our lives as actors. You know, you read a
book, somebody says they are going to make a movie, and
it's not what's in the book. I certainly experienced
that with a certain work by Mr.
Stoker.
TSM: Dracula, of
course.
CL: That's right. Well, I've done
Lord of the Rings and that's going to be like the books.
I told you I'm in Sleepy Hollow briefly and that pretty
well follows the book, except that Ichabod Crane is not
a school teacher, he's a police constable. And I'm the
person who sends him off to Sleepy Hollow to solve the
problem of the three people who have been murdered.
Similarly, Gormenghast is very faithful to the
book.
TSM: Tell me, what are your
recollections of Ian Fleming, to whom you were related
through your stepfather?
CL: Well, my
recollections of Ian are that he was an extremely
intelligent man who had travelled a great deal and knew
a great deal about a great many things, which is very
clear, of course, in the books that he wrote. He was a
great lover of the good life, a man who had knowledge of
many rather bizarre and exotic and somewhat unknown
areas-like all the weaponry and everything which he
describes so accurately in all his stories.
He
had a very nice house in London, in Victoria Square,
which I used to go to occasionally, and then the house
in St. Margaret's Bay down in Sandwich, Kent, because he
was, like me, a great lover of the game of golf. We were
members of Royal St. George's at Sandwich Kent, which,
of course, is the scene for the classic match in
Goldfinger, hole by hole, if you remember
that.
TSM: Yes, I remember
that.
CL: Well they changed the name to
Royal St. Mark's, changed the name of the professional
from Albert Whiting to Alfred Blacking, changed the name
of the famous short hole, the sixth hole, from The
Maiden to The Virgin. Otherwise it's exactly the same,
although they didn't play the match on that course in
the film. Sean Connery had never played golf but became
a complete fanatic as a result of this film.
My
recollections of Ian are of a very intelligent,
entertaining, amusing man, with a very acid wit. Always
smoked cigarettes in an amber holder. Even on the golf
course he would smoke and he would smoke and he would
smoke. He liked his libation. I mean, he didn't drink
too much or anything like that, but he liked it. He was
very conventional in many ways and extremely
unconventional in other ways, very attractive to women,
very much respected by men. We used to talk when we
played golf, on the course and afterwards in the
clubhouse bar.
The sad thing is I saw him not
very long before he died and he said, "One of my
greatest ambitions is going to be realized next year,"
and I said, "What's that, Ian?" because Bond had already
started, of course. He said, "I'm going to be Captain of
Royal St. George's Golf Club in Sandwich." It never
happened. He died in the ambulance on the way to
Canterbury.
TSM: Well it's been a very,
very interesting and entertaining hour. It was a great
pleasure. Thank you.
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