10 War Movie Actors Who Were Actually There
2. Christopher Lee
The most obligatory behind-the-scenes trivia with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is that Viggo Mortensen broke his foot when he kicked that Orc helmet in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second most obligatory bit of trivia is that Saruman actor Christopher Lee quite threateningly refused direction from Peter Jackson during the character's death scene in Return of the King, which involved the wizard being stabbed from behind by Wormtongue. "Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when someone is stabbed in the back?" Lee recalled saying to Jackson, "Because I do."
Lee apparently went on to discuss, in Jackson's own words, "a very clandestine part of World War II", intimating his own firsthand experiences of the conflict and what people sound like when they're stabbed - which it stands to reason the British actor had a great deal of familiarity with. Lee served in RAF Intelligence throughout the Second World War, taking part in the North African, Sicilian and Italian campaigns while also being attached to the SAS. As if these exploits weren't extraordinary enough, Lee - after also having conducted espionage missions in Europe - helped hunt down Nazi war criminals after the war's conclusion, completing his military service in 1946.
Apart from taking on the iconic roles of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and Dracula in the Hammer Horror films, some of Lee's earliest acting assignments were WWII pictures - some of which depicted British Special Forces operations not unlike the ones he may have partaken in himself. Of these, arguably the most famous is The Cockleshell Heroes, based on the daring commando raid that took place in 1942. The superior film, though, is Nicholas Ray's Bitter Victory, another genre effort that dealt with commando subject matter - this time with Richard Burton in the lead, and North Africa the setting.
Lee only had supporting roles in the above films, but it's still fascinating to see him show up in material that hit so close to his wartime record.