Christopher Lee Knew Everyone

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We’ve already talked about Christopher Lee on this site before, like that time he took a role as a wizard in a shitty TV show just so he could send Peter Jackson a picture of himself wearing the outfit when he heard he was directing Lord of the Rings. Today we’re going to talk about how Christopher Lee seemingly knew fucking everyone. 

In his nearly 7 decade long career as an actor, Christopher Lee made a number of high-profile friends in the industry who in turn introduced him to their friends giving Lee a social circle that included everyone from his old army buddies to actual Kings and Queens. Which came in rather handy when Lee was engaged to marry a countess in the 50’s.

You see, sometime in the 50’s Lee met a Swedish countess in a nightclub who immediately became smitten with him because she had eyes and holy fuck have you seen what Christopher Lee looked like when he was younger?

Damn
#Swag

After a brief romance, the pair decided to get engaged, which apparently annoyed the shit out of Lee’s fiancée’s father who had made it clear that he didn’t think Lee was right for his daughter. According to Lee, the main problem the Count had with him was that he didn’t think acting was a stable career choice and he doubted that Lee would be able to provide for his daughter.

While this may seem stupid considering that, as mentioned earlier, Lee went on to have a nearly 70 year long career, in the 50’s Lee was still doing bit parts for next to no pay because no director was willing to put him and his stunningly handsome face in a leading role because he was “too tall”. Again this seems stupid, but it kind of makes sense when you realise that at 6ft 5 inches tall, Lee quite literally towered over everyone else in the room. As a result, Lee was almost exclusively relegated to a background role in movies during the 50’s and frequently had to be filmed sitting down or crouching so he didn’t make the lead actor look like Tom Cruise. One notable exception is the film, Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. in which Lee was given a more prominent role when the director asked him if he could speak Spanish and fence, to which he replied, “of course I can“. Even then, Lee was filmed in such as way that his imposing height didn’t make the people he was talking to look like Smurfs.

Christopher Lee

This largely stopped being a problem in the early 60’s when Lee was cast as and became synonymous with Dracula, a role for which his towering frame and deep booming voice was desirable.

And then some.
And then some.

Moving back to the topic at hand, when the Count expressed to Lee that he didn’t think Lee could provide for his daughter, Lee agreed but countered by saying that he was a stand-up guy who everyone thought was pretty great. In response the count hired private investigators to get all up in Lee’s business to look for something, anything that would allow the Count to say he wasn’t fit for his daughter without looking like a dickhole. When the private investigators didn’t find anything, the Count decided to just start making wild demands of Lee in the hope he’d give up his mission to get busy with his daughter. This culminated in the Count telling Lee that he’d only let him marry his daughter if he could get the blessing of the King of Sweden himself, presumably thinking to himself that there’d be no fucking way Lee could pull it off.

What the Count didn’t know though was that Lee actually did know the King of Sweden, having met him whist filming a TV show, meaning Lee was able to get the King’s blessing mere by calling his palace, mentioning who he was and asking for it, stunning the Count.

Despite getting permission from a king to marry the countess, Lee eventually called the whole thing off himself after becoming worried that he couldn’t provide for his fiancee by acting, telling her that she deserved better. The two would later amicably separate. A few years later Lee got over the whole ordeal by marrying a model and having what we presume was an unbelievable amount of sex.

That's one lucky woman.
That’s one lucky woman.