Actor: Christopher Lee

Christopher Lee appeared in more than two hundred films across seven decades, which may be the largest credited filmography of any leading actor. He played Dracula for Hammer nine times and spent years afterward resisting the association.

The height, the voice and the stillness made him a natural monster, and his Dracula speaks very little across several of the films, which he objected to and which works.

The late career gave him Saruman and Count Dooku, introducing him to an audience with no idea about Hammer at all. He also recorded heavy metal albums in his eighties, genuinely.

He served in the Special Operations Executive during the war and consistently declined to discuss the details, which has left an unusual amount of speculation attached to a horror actor.