Late horror icon Christopher Lee wanted to be a comedian …

Ive interviewed a lot of celebrities over the past 40 years, but for a Baby Boomer like me, perhaps the most exciting to meet was the late, great horror icon Christopher Lee.

Id grown up on Lees British Hammer Films classics of the 1950s and 1960s, which included turns as such immortal characters as Frankensteins monster, the Mummy, Oriental archvillain Fu Manchu and, of course, his signature role, the definitive interpretation of Dracula (which he repeated nine times in films of widely varying quality).

But what I learned when Lee was promoting The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, in 2002, was that he really yearned to be a comedian.

Casting agents thought I couldnt play comedy, so probably the most important thing Ive done in my career is guest-hosting Saturday Night Live in 1978, with the original cast at the height of their powers, Lee told me with his impeccable Shakespearean diction. It was watched by 35 million people, and it was the third-highest-rated show of the series.

The studio audience that night included Steven Spielberg, who invited Lee to play a Nazi commander opposite Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune in the World War II farce 1941. The aristocratic actor was also screamingly funny as a gay motorcyclist in the comedy Serial (1980), Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilders The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Rochefort in The Three Musketeers (1973) and as a mad scientist in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).

Fans tend to remember Lee for many other roles. Touring Grants Tomb back in 2002, he reported being recognized as the elegant villain Scaramanga in the James Bond adventure The Man With the Golden Gun (1974).

Scaramanga was the dark side of Bond, not the brutal, mindless thug he was in the book, said Lee, who was a stepcousin and regular golfing partner of Bond creator Ian Fleming (who reportedly wanted Lee to play the title role in Dr. No, which had already been promised to Joseph Wiseman).

Lee was also the only cast member of The Lord of the Rings films to have met author J.R.R. Tolkien back in the 1950s.

Id read the first one and thought it was one of the books of the century. I say that not because its good publicity, but because I really do mean that, he told me with complete sincerity. I was in a pub in Oxford with some friends of mine and I went over and practically knelt before him.

Christopher Lee as Saruman in 2001s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.Photo: New Line Cinema

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Late horror icon Christopher Lee wanted to be a comedian ...

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero