Christopher Lee to receive Academy Fellowship from BAFTA

Legendary British actor Christopher Lee will be presented with BAFTA’s Academy Fellowship at the Orange British Academy Film Awards ceremony this coming Sunday. Awarded annually, the Fellowship is the Academy’s highest accolade and recognises an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film. Lee – who has appeared in almost 200 films in a career spanning eight decades – will join a distinguished list of fellows that includes 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.

After his international breakthrough in Hammer Films’ The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula, Lee went on to star in a host of films such as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Wicker Man, The Man with the Golden Gun and Jinnah. In recent years he has made regular appearances for director Tim Burton, as well as villainous turns in blockbuster series such as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Lee will appear later this year in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret alongside Jude Law, Chloe Moretz and Sacha Baron Cohen and is also scheduled to return to Middle-Earth for Peter Jackson’s two-part prequel The Hobbit.

The British Academy Film Awards takes place this Sunday and will be broadcast in the UK on BBC One.