Ian McKellen Shares Memories Of His Lord Of The Rings Co-Star Christopher Lee

Much of Christopher Lee’s acting prime was spent making cheap horror films. It wasn’t until the latter half of his life that he was truly introduced and appreciated by mainstream audiences.

In 2001, Peter Jackson cast Lee to play the wicked wizard Saruman in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee, who was the only member of the cast to actually meetJ.R.R. Tolkien, was a huge fan of the books and had longed to play Gandalf. But being 78-years-old at that time made the physical demands of the role a bit difficult for even him. Though, that didn’t keep Lee from expressing his interest in the part to Ian McKellen when they first met.

Ian McKellen wrote on his official facebook page:

When I arrived in New Zealand to start filming as Gandalf, in the first week of the 21st Century, Peter Jackson held a dinner for some of the cast. I was happily next to Christopher Lee who I had known of throughout my actor-admiring life. He’d been cast as the white wizard Saruman but his opening line to me was: “I’ve always thought I should play Gandalf. I read ‘Lord of the Rings’ every year – sometimes twice.”

He then treated me to a snatch of the black speech of Mordor and I felt inadequate. Not that that was Chris’s intention: he was 78 and well practised in the art of gentlemanly rectitude. The epitome of “tall, dark and handsome” kept any inner demons for his acting Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and, once, as Sherlock Holmes.

It’s what made his Saruman so effective. With his long beard and white robes, he had the air of a stern yet benign Pope that belied his ambition to rule Middle-earth, with cruelty and spite.

Between our facing-off on the set, he could easily be persuaded to reminisce. After all there were over 200 films on his CV and a couple of singing albums. His earliest intention was to be an opera bass., Touchingly he was a little nervous at the outset. “Peter made me do my first speech 10 times!!” I told him not to worry as the previous day I’d had to repeat a scene 27 times. His dark eyes widened and glinted but he didn’t complain again.

Peter was tickled to have his Hammer Horror hero as the villain and devised a spectacular death to acknowledge his vampiric past – falling onto a spike which pierced his dastardly heart. Chris didn’t much approve and I think the episode can only be seen in the extended Director’s Cut.

An odd pity that he didn’t work in the theatre, nor direct a film, like his idol Laurence Olivier who had Chris as a spear-carrier in his film of ‘Hamlet.’ But he was justly proud of the span and success of his career in movies and when knighted must, like all of us, have been pleased to share a title with Sir Larry.

The last time Saruman and Gandalf filmed together was ’round a table in Rivendell but while Galadriel, Elrond and I were in the Wellington studio, Sir Christopher’s interjections were filmed in London some months later. You can’t tell. In movies, all is not as it seems.

Yet when he joined the “Star Wars” cast he said he did all his own stunts without benefit of a stand-in. That certainly wasn’t true of his gravity-defying fight with Gandalf. I suspect he just wanted to declare he was in old age fit for purpose. He needn’t have worried. His acting prowess never declined. — Ian McKellen, June 2015

Our condolences to Christopher Lee’s family and friends.