Here's how Christopher Lee shifted from Dracula to 007 baddie
Scaramanga was pretty different from The Count!
It's hard to picture a young Christopher Lee as anything other than the villain. He's handsomely debonair in a way that makes him easily dislikeable. What does this guy think he's better than us? And he's British?! And not, like, a relatable, London street urchin kind of British. The guy's quite posh! He reeks of education and sophistication. Sure, he's probably a nice guy in real life, and was absolutely charming in some later roles where he got to be a good guy. But the legend was built with wry, evil smiles and nasty scowls.
Obviously, the biggest and baddest of those iconic roles is Dracula, an all-timer villain up there with Darth Vader and The Wicked Witch of the West. Lee's great contribution was making Dracula a sort of seductive, alluring character. Remember how we said he's handsomely debonair? It works wonders in trapping some potential prey at his castle.
However, most movie fans know that Lee wasn't just Dracula. Nearly as memorable was his turn as Francisco Scaramanga, the titular Man With the Golden Gun in the 1974 James Bond film. Did you know Lee was the real-life step-cousin of Bond author Ian Fleming? Neat!
Anyway, the characters are both villains, but there's a gulf between the bloodsucking Dracula and the hitman Scaramanga. So, how did Lee so believably make the pivot? A 1975 interview with Cinefantastique reveals all, as Lee brings us in on how he went from one big-time bad guy to the next.
"[...] the director, whom I've known for many years, I've never worked for as an actor, but Guy Hamilton got something out of me in this picture which I've never been able to show on the screen. In his words, he got the spooky out of me. He got the Dracula out of me. Because, obviously, I can become very menacing, rather heavy, if I'm not careful, even with ordinary lines, because I've done it so often. And he's getting me to do this picture in such a light way that you can hardly believe this man is as lethal as he is. He's getting me to smile. He's getting me to laugh, which I must admit, I don't find very easy to do as an actor. But he's getting the lightness of performance out of me."
So there you have it! Lee was two iconic antagonists, due in no small part to the skills of the filmmakers he worked with. It takes an excellent actor to deliver the way Lee does, and it takes a great director to know how to best calibrate those performances for each project.
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