Top 40 Christopher Lee Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We don’t always get the kind of work we want, but we always have a choice of whether to do it with good grace or not.”

— Christopher Lee

2. “My favourite country is Finland because once you get to a certain point, you can drive for hours without seeing a single person. I love peace and quiet – something I don’t get very often.”

— Christopher Lee

3. “The thing I have always tried to do is surprise people: to present them with something they didn’t expect.”

— Christopher Lee

4. “Once asked if he felt wearied by the constant onslaught of autograph seekers, actor Gregory Peck replied that he would be more worried when they stopped asking.”

— Christopher Lee

5. “I think that – apart from the fields of science and medicine – we live in an age of decline. Look at the world. There is decline in morals, ideals, manners, respect, truthfulness: just about everything, in fact.”

— Christopher Lee

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

— Christopher Lee

7. “I wasn’t a spy. I’d have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.”

— Christopher Lee

8. “When the Second World War finished, I was 23, and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I’d seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. So seeing horror depicted on film doesn’t affect me much.”

— Christopher Lee

9. “As far as I am concerned, Don Quixote is the most metal fictional character that I know. Single handed, he is trying to change the world, regardless of any personal consequences.”

— Christopher Lee

10. “I was once asked what I thought was the most disquieting thing you could see on the screen and I said, ‘an open door.’”

— Christopher Lee

11. “What’s really important for me is, as an old man, I’m known by my own generation and the next generation know me, too.”

— Christopher Lee

12. “To be a legend, you’ve either got to be dead or excessively old!”

— Christopher Lee

13. “I haven’t spent my entire career playing the guy in the bad hat, although I have to say that the bad guy is frequently much more interesting than the good guy.”

— Christopher Lee

14. “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.”

— Christopher Lee

15. “Someone asked me yesterday if Dracula met Saruman and there was a fight, who would win. I just looked at this man. What an idiotic thing to say. I mean, really, it was half-witted.”

— Christopher Lee

16. “The saddest country I went to was Romania, years ago, during Ceausescu’s rule.”

— Christopher Lee

17. “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.”

— Christopher Lee

18. “I was always fascinated by fairy stories, fantasy, you know, demons, necromancers, gods and goddesses, everything that is out of our kin and out of our everyday world. I was always interested in enchantment and magicians and still am.”

— Christopher Lee

19. “I think acting is a mixture of instinct, imagination and inventiveness. All you can learn as an actor is basic technique.”

— Christopher Lee

20. “The Dracula movies are probably some of the most famous and enduring ones there are and I am very grateful to them, for sure.”

— Christopher Lee

21. “I’m much softer than people think. I don’t present to the world an emotional face. I’m pretty good at self-control, but I am easily moved.”

— Christopher Lee

22. “The secret to a long marriage in the film industry? Marry someone wonderful, as I did. And always have her come along on location.”

— Christopher Lee

23. “Comedy is the most difficult thing to do. Easily the most difficult.”

— Christopher Lee

24. “I associate heavy metal with fantasy because of the tremendous power that the music delivers.”

— Christopher Lee

25. “In Britain, any degree of success is met with envy and resentment.”

— Christopher Lee

26. “I thought that people should know about the dangers of Satanism, and diabolism does exist – there’s no question about it.”

— Christopher Lee

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

— Christopher Lee

28. “When I first read “Lord of the Rings”, I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time, the technology wasn’t there, there was no such thing as CGI.”

— Christopher Lee

29. “Johnny Depp, as far as I’m concerned, is number one. Of his generation, there’s no one who can touch him. Some performers, today, it’s like looking at holes in the air.”

— Christopher Lee

30. “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.”

— Christopher Lee

31. “There was a gap of seven years between the first and second Dracula movies. In the second one as everybody knows, I didn’t speak, because I said I couldn’t say the lines.”

— Christopher Lee

32. “I stopped appearing as Dracula in 1972 because in my opinion the presentation of the character had deteriorated to such an extent, particularly bringing him into the contemporary day and age, that it really no longer had any meaning.”

— Christopher Lee

33. “Acting is like a snowstorm or perhaps a large empty vacuum. I’m not deluded by the fact that I’m getting all these offers for work, I’m very happy about it, but I know also that there is the other side and who knows, next year, they may not offer me anything. You never know.”

— Christopher Lee

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

— Christopher Lee

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

— Christopher Lee

36. “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.”

— Christopher Lee

37. “I don’t play long parts. They must be short parts, but they’ve got to be parts that mean something, that matter, where people will notice when I’m on the screen, and people will remember the character after they’ve seen the film.”

— Christopher Lee

38. “It’s a band singing on how metal should be played, the effect it has on the band and its listeners.”

— Christopher Lee

39. “I learned early that the one truly international quality among people of all races is xenophobia.”

— Christopher Lee

40. “Outside the cinema I had not yet learned to live, but within it I had most certainly learned to die. I could die for you in every way known to man, and in a few ways known only to scriptwriters. I could see now that provided that I remained fit, the future held many more deaths yet. I could only hope that they would serve some purpose, and that perhaps a reputation may come in the same way as a coral formation, which is made up of a deposit of countless tiny corpses.”

— Christopher Lee

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

— Christopher Lee

42. “The song “My Way” is a very remarkable song. It is also difficult to sing because you’ve got to convince people that what you’re singing about is the truth. It’s a man who is very proud of having achieved everything that he’s achieved his way.”

— Christopher Lee

43. “I’ve done a lot of films that have become iconic, not necessarily because of me.”

— Christopher Lee

44. “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.”

— Christopher Lee

45. “I did radio, I did television, I did opera, I did films in which I had very, very little to say. But I had a lot of experience in front of the camera, and that’s what really counts.”

— Christopher Lee

46. “People should not pass judgment until they have seen the film.”

— Christopher Lee