Christopher Lee dies at 93 after battling respiratory problems.

British actor Christopher Lee, who devoted his long acting career to portraying villains, including Dracula in horror classics, and later appeared in the blockbuster Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises, has died at the age of 93.

Lee died on Sunday in hospital, where he had been treated for respiratory problems and heart failure over the preceding three weeks, British media reports said.

“I can confirm we issued a death certificate on June 8. Mr Christopher Lee died on June 7th,” said a spokeswoman for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.

Lee’s agent in an emailed statement said his family “wishes to make no comment”.

Tall, pale and with a deep, resonating voice, Lee will forever be remembered for his spine-chilling performance as Dracula in the cult Hammer Horror movies.

Watch: Christopher Lee as Dracula. Post continues after video.

Lee was the last English-language horror movie star in a line that traced back to silent era luminary Lon Chaney and included Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, Lee’s regular Hammer Films co-star.

Many leading directors sought out his talents, particularly in the latter stages of his career.

He won new generations of fans after the turn of the century in some of the biggest money makers in film history.

Lee had bit parts in film, theatre and radio, although at 1.95 metres, he said he suffered from being “too tall and too foreign-looking”.

His big break came when he signed with Britain’s legendary Hammer studios to make The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957.

He also played the evil Count Dooku, fighting Jedi knights in Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Lee portrayed the power-hungry wizard Saruman in director Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

But he was most closely associated with the role of Dracula, dispensing with the nobility Lugosi had given the role and adopting a more beastly, lustful bearing as he dispensed with various buxom victims.

Although Lee expressed frustration at being typecast as the villain, he admitted he enjoyed the roles.

“They’re more interesting, because there’s a greater variety you can apply: you can be very cruel or charming, amusing or dangerous,” Lee said.

Lee brought to his monsters a sense of pitifulness that he called “the loneliness of evil”. Despite being a master of the horror genre, Lee did not even like the word.

“It implies something nauseating, revolting, disgusting — which one sees too often these days. I prefer the word ‘fantasy’,” he told the New York Times in 2002.

However, he criticised the gratuitous violence of many modern films, arguing the power of suggestion was more terrifying — something he mastered early on, scaring the wits out of viewers with his piercing gaze.

Lee was born on May 27, 1922, and took up acting on the suggestion of a cousin after serving in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

He made his film debut in 1947, launching a career that eventually spanned more than 200 movies.

Lee played the fiendish criminal genius Fu Manchu in five films, the villain Scaramanga in the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and, in a rare departure from cinematic wickedness, gave life to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in a couple of films.

Roger Moore, who played 007 opposite Lee's villainously brilliant Scaramanga said, "It's terrible when you lose an old friend, and Christopher Lee was one of my oldest".

As part of his late-career flourish, he also appeared in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) and Tim Burton's black comedy Dark Shadows (2012) with Johnny Depp.

Director Tim Burton told BBC news Lee had "inspired an entire generation of film-makers".

Prime Minister David Cameron described him on Twitter as "a titan of the golden age of cinema and a distinguished WW2 veteran who'll be greatly missed".

However, he criticised the gratuitous violence of many modern films, arguing the power of suggestion was more terrifying — something he mastered early on, scaring the wits out of viewers with his piercing gaze.

Lee was born on May 27, 1922, and took up acting on the suggestion of a cousin after serving in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

He made his film debut in 1947, launching a career that eventually spanned more than 200 movies.

Watch Christopher Lee in Lord of the Rings. Post continues after video.

Lee played the fiendish criminal genius Fu Manchu in five films, the villain Scaramanga in the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and, in a rare departure from cinematic wickedness, gave life to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in a couple of films.

Roger Moore, who played 007 opposite Lee's villainously brilliant Scaramanga said, "It's terrible when you lose an old friend, and Christopher Lee was one of my oldest".

As part of his late-career flourish, he also appeared in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) and Tim Burton's black comedy Dark Shadows (2012) with Johnny Depp.

Director Tim Burton told BBC news Lee had "inspired an entire generation of film-makers".

Prime Minister David Cameron described him on Twitter as "a titan of the golden age of cinema and a distinguished WW2 veteran who'll be greatly missed".

This post originally appeared on the ABC and was republished here with full permission. 

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