Hello, I'm Kesti Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My cost away this week is an actor. He was born in London's Bel Gravia, the son of a soldier,

and an Italian contestant who was a noted Edwardian beauty. In a career spanning 50 years,

he's acted in 27 plays, performed on radio, television, and on record, and taken part in 230 films.

Though the statistics display versatility, he is universally known for one particular type,

the curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, theatre of death, the titles tell all.

Swave, cool, and dripping with blood, he is British cinema's King of Horror, Christopher Lee.

And yet, strange to say, Christopher, you haven't made a horror film for 23 years.

Something like, here's 22, 23 years. But the reputation sticks. How much do you mind?

I mind if people only think of me as having done that and nothing else. I don't mind because

there are over 200 other films, which disprove the fact that I am committed and shackled to the

playing of one particular role and one particular kind of film. I made my name known and my face,

which at first was unrecognizable, became known as a result of doing those pictures from 1957 onwards.

I have always been extremely grateful for the fact that I was given the chance and the opportunity

to play a character which by a stroke of good fortune happened to hit home all over the world.

So it's been a blessing and a curse, isn't it? But I want to explore both of those aspects of it

with you. But let's get on to your music, which is all opera because as I understand it,

you might had you not gone into Hammer Horror or Hammer Fantasy as you prefer. You might have been

an opera singer. Yes, my great grandparents found it the first opera company in Australia ever,

round about the beginning of the 19th century. I can't remember exactly when, and they had five

...