British actor Christopher Lee has died at age 93. Lee was best-known in recent years for his roles as evil wizards in two epic fantasy series — Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and George Lucas's Star Wars — but his long career also brought him fame for roles ranging from a vampire to a cult leader.
In addition to appearing prominently in films known for their sweeping scores, Lee also had an idiosyncratic music career of his own. He said that acclaimed Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling was so impressed by Lee's singing voice in the early 1950s that Bjorling encouraged him to quit acting and take up opera singing ("You must use the instrument you were given").
That didn't happen, and hopes of attending the Royal College of Music came to naught, but 40 years later Lee did embark on what the New York Times describes as "a low-key singing career with concerts and recordings, including arias, show tunes and, in 2010, what he characterized as 'symphonic metal' (with the album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross)."
Wikipedia lists 206 films (in addition to dozens of TV and video game appearances) in Lee's career, from 1948's Corridor of Mirrors to 2015's Angels in Notting Hill.
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