Christopher Lee

“I was attached to the SAS from time to time, but we are forbidden - former, present, or future - to discuss any specific operations.”

“I've always acknowledged my debt to Hammer. I've always said I'm very grateful to them. They gave me this great opportunity, made me a well known face all over the world for which I am profoundly grateful.”

“Let's just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read into that what they like.”

“Making films has never just been a job to me; it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting - I sing and I've written books, for instance - but acting is what keeps me going: it's what I do; it gives life purpose.”

“There are many vampires in the world today... you only have to think of the film business.”

“We don't live in a particularly attractive world. I don't really remember, except as a small boy, anything but a pretty grim world.”

“My father's family can be traced back to 1400. I've been told by gypsies that there is unmistakeably gypsy blood in me. Lee is a gypsy name, you know.”

“I haven't done lots of horror.”

“One of the first things a British visitor to Southern California discovers is that he must have a car. Freeways. Bad public transport. I took driving lessons.”

“I am never going to stop playing the villain. I would be foolish to do so because the audiences apparently enjoy watching me, and who am I to say no?”

“I knew Vincent Price from films - he was a big movie star - but the first time I met him was when we filmed 'The Oblong Box.'”

“If I had any deadly secrets, I wouldn't still be alive.”

“Peter Jackson's instincts are extraordinary, as is his stamina.”

“Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.”

“On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.”

“I didn't want to be known as a man who only made horror films. I made some - very few.”

“I lived for 10 years in Los Angeles, and the one element that surpasses everything else - that you are very conscious of - is fear. You can smell it.”

“You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it.”

“Films are now made by accountants. They pick a pretty young female or male face out of the air and give them a part - not because they think that person is right for it or is ready for it, but because they think that person will make them money.”

“I don't think anyone has ever succeeded in putting Ian Fleming's James Bond up on the screen. The closest in my opinion is Pierce Brosnan.”