Lee's other notable roles include The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), A Tale of Two Cities (1958), The Wicker Man (1973), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Jinnah (1998), Glorious 39 (2009) and Hugo (2011).

[11] They then returned to London, where Lee attended Wagner's private school in Queen's Gate, and his mother married Harcourt George St-Croix Rose, a banker and uncle of Ian Fleming.

His step-father was not prepared to pay the higher fees that being an Oppidan Scholar meant,[17] so instead he attended Wellington College, where he won scholarships in the classics, studying Ancient Greek and Latin.

[38] After he had passed his exams in Liverpool, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan meant that he travelled on the Reina del Pacifico to South Africa, then to his posting at Hillside, at Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia.

[44] After "killing time" at RAF Kasfareet near the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal Zone in 1942, he resumed intelligence work in the city of Ismaïlia.

[47] As the North African Campaign progressed, the squadron "leapfrogged" between Egyptian airstrips, from RAF El Daba to Maaten Bagush and on to Mersa Matruh; they lent air support to the ground forces and bombed strategic targets.

"[48] The Allied advance continued into Libya, through Tobruk and Benghazi to the Marble Arch and then through El Agheila, Khoms and Tripoli, with the squadron averaging five missions a day.

[58] During the final assault on Monte Cassino, the squadron was based in San Angelo, and Lee was nearly killed when one of the planes crashed on takeoff, and he tripped over one of its live bombs.

[59] After the battle, the squadron moved to airfields just outside Rome, and Lee visited the city, where he met his mother's cousin, Nicolò Carandini, who had fought in the Italian resistance movement.

[63] For the final few months of his service, Lee, who spoke fluent French, Italian and German, among other languages, was seconded to the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects.

[69][70] Leanne Simpson of Bangor University stated that "Actor Christopher Lee famously encouraged the embellishment of his two-year military service during World War II.

The Armed Forces were sending veterans with an education in the Classics to teach at universities, but Lee felt his Latin was too rusty and didn't care for the strict curfews.

I thought, "Right, I'll show you..." At the beginning I didn't know anything about the technique of working in front of a camera, but during those 10 years, I did the one thing that's so vitally important today – I watched, I listened and I learned.

[77] He played Charles; the director got around his height by placing him at a table in a nightclub alongside Lois Maxwell, Mavis Villiers, Hugh Latimer and John Penrose.

"[76] In this early period, he made an uncredited appearance in Laurence Olivier's film version of Hamlet (1948), as a spear carrier (his later co-star and close friend Peter Cushing played Osric).

[78] Lee appeared uncredited in the American epic Quo Vadis (1951), which was shot in Rome, playing a chariot driver and was injured when he was thrown from it at one point during the shoot.

Lee had previously appeared with Karloff in 1955 in the "At Night, All Cats are Grey" episode of the British television series Colonel March of Scotland Yard.

He's hypnotic, physically powerful, well-spoken, but Lee also understood – crucially – that an important layer from Bram Stoker's novel had been missing from Lugosi's performance: sexuality.

Stories vary as to the reason for this: Lee states he refused to speak the poor dialogue he was given, but screenwriter Jimmy Sangster claims that the script did not contain any lines for the character.

These included the Dr. Fu Manchu series of films made between 1965 and 1969 (beginning with The Face of Fu Manchu) in which he starred as the villain in yellowface make-up; I, Monster (1971), an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with the main characters' names changed to Dr. Charles Marlowe and Mr. Edward Blake; The Creeping Flesh (1972); and his personal favourite, which he considered his best film, The Wicker Man (1973), in which he played Lord Summerisle.

[75] Lee appeared as the on-screen narrator in Jess Franco's Eugenie (1970) as a favour to producer Harry Alan Towers, unaware that it was softcore pornography, as the sex scenes were shot separately.

[111] Lee's appearance in the final film in the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, was cut from the theatrical release, but the scene was reinstated in the extended edition.

Lee acted opposite Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman and did most of the swordplay himself, though a stunt double was required for the long shots with more vigorous footwork.

[116] Also in 2009, Lee starred in Stephen Poliakoff's British period drama Glorious 39, Academy Award-nominated director Danis Tanović's war film Triage, and Duncan Ward's comedy Boogie Woogie.

[121] He voiced Death in the animated versions of Terry Pratchett's Soul Music[118] and Wyrd Sisters,[118] and reprised the role in the Sky1 live action adaptation The Colour of Magic, taking over from the late Ian Richardson.

[118] He narrated and sang for the Danish musical group The Tolkien Ensemble's 2003 studio album At Dawn in Rivendell, taking the role of Treebeard, King Théoden and others in the readings or singing of their respective poems or songs.

The film was directed by Antti Jokinen, and Lee gave a "superbly sinister" performance alongside Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Lee relocated to Los Angeles in the 1970s after becoming disillusioned with film roles he was being offered in Britain at the time and stated that in Hollywood "I was no longer a horror star.

[169][67] On BBC Radio's Test Match Special "View from the Boundary" interview with Brian Johnston on 20 June 1987, Lee described himself as being 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall.

[199] In 2011, accompanied by his wife Birgit, and on the 164th anniversary of the birth of Bram Stoker, Lee was honoured with a tribute by University College Dublin, and described his honorary life membership of the UCD Law Society as "in some ways as special as the Oscars.