22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir …

If Sir Christopher Lee had just been a movie star, he would still have been an icon. But the late actor, who passed away last week, had an amazing life even beyond his incredible body of work. Whether youre still lamenting his passing or unsure why his death is such a loss, heres 22 reasons why Christopher Lee will always be a legend.

1) He was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007 for most screen credits, having appeared in 244 film and TV movies by that point in his career at which point he made 14 more movies, with a 15th due later this year (titled Angels in Notting Hill). He also holds the record for the tallest leading actor he stood 6 5 but also for starring in the most films with a sword fight with 17.

2) He mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee descended from the Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.

3) He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didnt do this as research for his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s.

4) At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine.

5) During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but wasnt allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britains special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted.

6) At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to Winston Churchills even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are literally still classified, but involved conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers. The SOE was more informally called and I cant believe this somehow hasnt been made into a movie yet The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

7) Lee never said anything specific about his time in the SOE, but he did say this: Ive seen many men die right in front of me - so many in fact that Ive become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won. By the end of the war hed received commendations for bravery from the British, Polish, Czech and Yugoslavia governments.

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22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir ...

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero