Everyone envied this actor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, here’s why!

News culture Everyone envied this actor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, here’s why!

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The only actor to meet Tolkien

Few legends can boast such an impact Lord of the rings to western culture. While the original books were written by JRR Tolkien were already considered the founding pillars of fantasy, Peter Jackson came to adapt this trilogy for the cinema in the early 2000s. These adaptations immediately became cult, so much so that they remain an unbeatable reference of the genre even today. It must be said that the feature films were shot with great care by a whole team of enthusiasts, including the casting itself. Among them, the great actor Christopher Lee was able to experience such a privilege that the rest of the team was jealous.

W ith a prolific career that began in the 1950s and included legendary films such as Dracula’s nightmare

, The Three Musketeers, Sleepy Hollow or war of stars, Christopher Lee was certainly the most renowned actor of the entire Lord of the Rings cast. However, that wasn’t what made the rest of the team jealous. At the beginning of his career Christopher Lee actually had the opportunity to meet Tolkien himself, a true privilege that he was the only one to have during the production of the film. Recalling this event, which took place in a pub in Oxford, Christopher Lee told Empire magazine a few years ago:

We were sitting around drinking beer and someone said, “Oh, look who’s there.” It was Professor Tolkien and I almost fell out of my chair. (…) I didn’t even know he was alive. He looked kind as he smoked his pipe, an English countryman with his feet on the ground. He was a genius, a man of incredible intelligence.

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He could have played a completely different role

In the same interview with Empire magazine, Christopher Lee said that he completely lost his temper when one of his friends called Tolkien to talk to them. A moment he didn’t want to forget in a hurry, especially since then The author of The Lord of the Rings himself took the opportunity to give him his blessing for the role of Gandalf on the day an adaptation was released. However, if you have seen the films, you know that this is not the role he has played since the Gray Wizard was played by Ian McKellen.

When he heard about Peter Jackson’s project, Christopher Lee immediately contacted him and tried to get the role of Gandalf. However, he was ultimately chosen for it Saroumane, which he obviously accepted. In another interview with Cinefantastique Online, Lee also revealed that the film crew often had fun questioning the actor’s knowledge by asking him the name of a particular character or a completely secondary object. As a true Tolkien fan, Christopher Lee never gave the slightest wrong answer to these questions. The British actor lived his life as a fan until he was 93 before passing away in 2015, preserving his status as a cinema legend for eternity.