Christopher Lee will receive an Academy Fellowship at this year’s BAFTA Awards, for his “outstanding and exceptional” contribution to film.
Previous fellows include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Christie, John Barry, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Terry Gilliam, Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave.
“It’s a very unexpected but very great honour to find myself in such distinguished company to receive the fellowship,” Lee said.
The actor first rose to fame in the 1950s for his roles in Hammer Horrors including Dracula and Frankenstein, and has since appeared in (among others) The Wicker Man, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Lee recently finished filming Martin Scorsese’s latest, Hugo Cabaret, alongside Jude Law, Chloe Moretz and Sacha Baron Cohen.
