Trivia: After several years in secondary film roles, the skeletal, menacing Christopher Lee achieved horror-flick stardom as the Monster in 1958's The Curse of Frankenstein, the second of his 21 Hammer Studios films. Contrary to popular belief, Lee and Peter Cushing did not first appear together in The Curse of Frankenstein. In Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which Cushing plays the minor role of Osric, Lee appears as the cadaverous candle-bearer in the "frighted with false fires" scene, one of his first film roles. In 1958, Lee made his inaugural appearance as "the Count" in The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing as Van Helsing. It would remain the favorite of Lee's Dracula films; the actor later noted that he was grateful to be allowed to convey "the sadness of the character. The terrible sentence, the doom of immortality...."Three years after Curse, Lee added another legendary figure to his gallery of characters: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes. With the release eight years later of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Lee became the first actor ever to portray both Holmes and Holmes' brother, Mycroft, onscreen. Other Lee roles of note include the title characters in 1959's The Mummy and the Fu Manchu series of the '60s, and the villainous Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond effort The Man With the Golden Gun. In one brilliant casting coup, the actor was co-starred with fellow movie bogeymen Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine in the otherwise unmemorable House of Long Shadows (1982). Established as a legend in his own right, Lee continued working steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films ranging from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) to Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999).In 2001, after appearing in nearly 300 film and television productions and being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the international star with the most screen credits to his name, the 79-year-old actor undertook the role of Saruman, chief of all wizards, in director Peter Jackson's eagerly anticipated screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Thought by many to be the millennial predecessor to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, audiences thrilled to the wondrous battle between Saruman and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) atop the wizard's ominous tower, though Lee didn't play favorites between the franchises when Lucas shot back with the continuing saga of Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in mid-2002. Wielding a lightsaber against one of the most powerful adversaries in the Star Wars canon, Lee proved that even at 80 he still had what it takes to be a compelling and demanding screen presence. He lent his vocal talents to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in 2005, and appeared as the father of Willy Wonka in the same director's adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. He appeared as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith, and voiced the part for the animated Clone Wars. He appeared in the quirky British film Burke & Hare in 2010, and the next year he could be seen Martin Scorsese's Hugo. In 2012 he teamed with Tim Burton yet again when he appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows.Now nearly into 90s, Lee returned to Middle Earth in 2012 with Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the first (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and third (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) films. He also reprised the role in a number of video games based on the two series. Lee was still actively working when he died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Imperious, intellectual-looking British actor Peter Cushing studied for a theatrical career under the guidance of Cairns James at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Cushing supported himself as a clerk in a surveyor's office before making his first professional stage appearance in 1935. Four years later, he came to America, where he was featured in a handful of Broadway plays and Hollywood feature films. He had a small part in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and also doubled for Louis Hayward in the "twin" scenes; he was among the rather overaged students in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940); and he was second male lead in the Carole Lombard vehicle Vigil in the Night (1940). After closing out his Hollywood tenure with They Dare Not Love (1941), he returned to stage work in England. His next film appearance was as Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), which also featured his future co-star Christopher Lee in a nonspeaking bit (Cushing and Lee's paths would cross again cinematically in Moulin Rouge [1952], though, as in Hamlet, they shared no scenes).In the early '50s, Cushing became a TV star by virtue of his performance in the BBC production of George Orwell's 1984. Still, film stardom would elude him until 1957, when he was cast as Baron Frankenstein in Hammer Films' The Curse of Frankenstein. It was the first of 19 appearances under the Hammer banner; Cushing went on to play Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula (1958) and Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), roles which, like Baron Frankenstein, he would repeat time and again. Though his horror film appearances brought him fame and fortune, Cushing ruefully commented that he'd prefer not to be so tightly typecast: It is significant that his entry in the British publication Who's Who in the Theatre lists all of his theatrical credits, but only one title -- Hamlet -- in his film manifest. In 1975, after a decade's absence, Cushing made a return to the theater in Washington Square, ironically playing the role originated on Broadway by fellow Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone. Many of Cushing's later film assignments were in the tongue-in-cheek category, notably his sneeringly evil Governor Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and his backwards-talking librarian in Top Secret! (1984). Retiring from the screen in 1986, Peter Cushing penned two volumes of memoirs: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting (1988).

Trivia: British actor William Franklyn added films to his stage credits starting in the mid '50s. He gained worldwide prominence with Enemy From Space (1957), a filmization of the popular British science-fiction TV series Quatermass II. Many of his screen performances were in period costume, which he wore as if he'd just stepped out of an earlier century: The Legend of Young Dick Turpin (1964), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) were two of the many. William Franklyn moved between films and TV with impunity throughout the '60s and '70s.

Trivia: On the strength of his performance as Claudius in the '60s British TV series The Caesars, Freddie Jones won the 1969 World's Best TV Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. It was an honor he'd seldom be in danger of winning again. A one-time lab technician who'd won a scholarship to the Rose Buford College of Speech and Drama, Jones started out as a stage actor of unusual perception and intelligence. He gave audiences a taste of what was to come with a small screeching role in his first film, Marat/Sade (1966). Biding his time in staid character roles for his few years in films, Jones let loose with his performance as a dedicated scientist turned synthetic monster in 1970's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. After this, the estimable Jones became, if not Britain's Vincent Price, certainly Britain's Anthony Zerbe. Twitchy, eccentric, and about as subtle as a cattle stampede, Jones built up his fan following in such concoctions as The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), Krull (1983), Dune (1984), Erik the Viking (1989) and Wild at Heart (1990). Freddie Jones may have long since abandoned any efforts at screen realism, but he definitely knows on which side his bread is buttered.

Trivia: The daughter of a high-born British military major, actress Joanna Lumley was a model before entering films with 1968's Some Girls Do. In 1976, she took on the Diana Rigg-like female lead on the British TV action series The New Avengers, costarring Patrick MacNee of the old Avengers. Joanna also costarred in two of Blake Edwards' Pink Panther movies of the '80s. Thoroughly jettisoning her previous cool-glamour image, Joanna Lumley costarred with Jennifer Saunders in the 1993 British TV sitcom Absolutely Fabulous as a pair of boozing, bawdy functionaries in the '90s fashion world (the series was picked up by the American cable network Comedy Central in 1994). So popular was Ms. Lumley's characterization of potty-mouthed, cheap-thrill-seeking Patsy that, shortly after the premiere of Absolutely Fabulous, she was being imitated in TV commercials by comic actor John Cleese!On the big screen she appeared in Cold Comfort Farm, James and the Giant Peach, and The Cat's Meow before returning to her signature role as Patsy Stone for another run of Absolutely Fabulous in 2001. After that she could be seen in Eurotrip, and provided voiceover work in both Doogal and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. She starred in the series Clatterford, and had a prominent part in the 2011 project Late Bloomers.

Trivia: British character actor Richard Vernon specialized in playing dignified, stiff upper-lipped nobles, military officers, and patriarchs in a wide variety of films and television programs. Though he had an uncredited bit part in Indiscreet (1958), Vernon did not make his formal film debut until he played Sir Edgar Hargreaves in Village of the Damned (1960).

Trivia: British actor Patrick Barr went from stage to screen with 1932's The Merry Men of Sherwood. Barr spent the 1930s playing various beneficent authority figures and "reliable friend" types, picking up where he left off in 1946 after six years' military service. In the early 1950s Barr began working in British television, attaining a popularity that had undeservedly eluded him while playing supporting parts in such films as The Frightened Lady (1941) and The Blue Lagoon (1948). This latter-day fame enabled Patrick Barr to insist upon better roles and command a higher salary for his films of the 1950s and 1960s: among the movies in which he appeared during this period were The Dam Busters (1955), Saint Joan (1957), Next to No Time (1960), Billy Liar (1963) and The Great Train Robbery (1978).

Trivia: British actor Lockwood West spent nearly six decades in the entertainment industry and worked on stage, television, and occasionally in feature films. He made his stage debut in 1926. A small-boned man with delicate features, he was frequently cast as an eccentric.