As the veteran actor Christopher Lee, surely the biggest – if not tallest – A-Lister of the B-Movie scene, turns 93 today, it’s hard to deny the indelible mark he’s left in the world of cinema. As Dracula, he hammered home the quintessential performance time and again of the brooding bloodsucker, while turns in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit franchises, as well as a Bond villain and a Star Wars baddie, have cemented his reputation as a geek icon. But he’s put that booming voice to other uses over the years...

Here’s nine things you may not have known about Christopher Lee on his 93rd birthday:

9. His missions during WWII remain classified

As a young Briton during World War II, Lee signed up to the army after returning to England from Finland. As a physically capable soldier he was selected to join the SAS, one of the world's first elite special forces corps. To date, none of the missions he actually carried out have been declassified, so nobody is quite sure what he got up to - though he maintains and hints that he saw plenty of action, handled himself well, and that the horrors of what he witnessed left him desensitised to any horror characters he would go on to play.

8. He's head and shoulders above most other actors, but he's also rubbed shoulders with plenty of them

At a towering 196 centimetres or 6’5” tall, there are few actors in Hollywood that can physically look down on Lee, who was officially awarded the accolade of the world’s tallest by the Guinness Book of Records. It’s not the only record the book’s committee gave him, as he also collected gongs for having performed the most on-screen sword fights, and for being the best connected man in Hollywood; the IMDb credits Lee with more than 250 roles across his career, with other sources saying as many as 350.

7. He is rumoured to have amassed one of the world's biggest occult libraries 

One of his most celebrated screen turns saw him turning heads to bite into necks as Count Dracula, but that isn't where his connection to the occult and mysticism ends.Rumours have long circulated that he has anywhere from 2,000 to 20,000 occult and black magic books in his personal library, though he firmly maintains this is all a load of mumbo jumbo stoked by the media.

In an interview he admitted to owning a handful of books on the topic, and that he had once met a group of Satanists, but warned anyone from getting involved with them. “You will not only lose your mind,” Lee said, “You will lose your soul.”

6. He is an avid opera fan and occasional operatic singer 

Lee’s lineage has long been associated with music and opera, with his grandparents credited with forming the first ever opera company in Australia.

A young Christopher Lee revealed a natural talent for singing and frequently performed at public events from an early age. Jussi Björling, one of the world’s best known opera singers, heard Lee sing and wanted to foster the developing talent, inviting Lee to join his opera company permanently. Lee turned him down, but still sings opera now and again.

5. He also likes heavy metal... 

Lee’s love of music seemingly covers all genres, as the actor has recorded numerous heavy-metal albums, and even releases an annual heavy-metal Christmas single.

Last year, he covered Frank Sinatra’s My Way, in a version in which he attempted to sing “more operatically” than Old Blue Eyes could muster. In 2010, he released his first album paying homage to the life of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, completing a second one in 2013. That album, Charlemagne: Omens of Death was recorded with the help of Richie Faulkner, guitarist with Judas Priest, and one him a ‘Spirit of Metal’ award. 

4. His Hammer producers sunk their teeth in and he couldn't shake Dracula off 

His career as a screen actor really took off when he played the role of Dracula in a number of films made by the British studio Hammer Film Productions. But as more and more of the Dracula films were released, the quality of the material became increasingly schlocky, and he himself has said he was not a fan of the later scripts. So why did he keep doing them?

Lee revealed in an interview that he felt emotionally blackmailed by the producers to keep playing the role, as the studio execs told him they had already “sold it to the Americans with him in it.” When he expressed reservation, they told him that all of the film crew’s jobs would be lost if he failed to take up the role, and he reluctantly agreed. 

The role in Dracula made him a household name [Flickr/Alvaro Tapia]

3. He could have been in more than just one 007 movie 

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was actually a cousin of Lee’s, and it has been whispered that some of the cloak-and-dagger missions that 007 gets up to in the novels are in fact based on Lee’s classified missions as a member of the SAS.

But Fleming also wanted his cousin Christopher to take on the role when the movie was casting his superspy. The writer believed firmly that an actor with Lee’s star power would do the franchise a favour, and that as a former SAS agent, Lee had the experience and skills to pull off the role. The producers differed, and went with Sean Connery instead, though Lee was ultimately cast as one of the series most enduring villains when he played Scaramanga, the eponymous Man with the Golden Gun. 

2. His meeting with JRR Tolkien left him starstruck 

One of his most enduring roles is as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies, and he is well known for being a huge fan of the series of books. When he first auditioned for Peter Jackson, he sent the Kiwi director a photo of himself dressed as a wizard, and wrote to him to explain that it was likely he was the only actor in the mix that had actually met the series’ creator JRR Tolkien.

As a young man, Lee and a group of friends happened upon the fantasy writer in a pub, and was so taken aback by the presence of his literary hero that the only thing he could manage to say was “How do you do?”

Lee as Saruman in The Hobbit trilogy [IMDb]

1. He is box-office gold 

Having appeared in so many hugely successful movie franchises over a number of decades, Lee has consistently chosen roles in blockbuster after blockbuster. Conservative estimates reveal that his work in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Alice in Wonderland, to name but a few, see his box-office clout at almost $7bn. 

Every Wednesday, The Picture Show's Philip Molloy joins George live in studio on The Right Hook to talk about the big and small screen, taking listener questions and remembering the classics. Tune in live from 6.30pm or listen back to the show's podcasts here.