Christopher Lee, the British actor who played a seductive Count Dracula, dies at 93

Christopher Lee, the physically towering British movie actor who lent his distinguished good looks, Shakespearean voice and aristocratic presence to a gallery of villains, from a seductive Count Dracula to a dreaded wizard in “The Lord of the Rings,” died on Sunday in London. He was 93.

An official for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London confirmed the death, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Lee was 35 when his breakthrough film, Terence Fisher’s British horror movie “The Curse of Frankenstein,” was released in 1957. He played the creature. But it was a year later, when he played the title role in Fisher’s “Dracula,” that his cinematic identity became forever associated with Bram Stoker’s noble, ravenous vampire, who in Mr. Lee’s characterization exuded a certain lascivious sex appeal.

When the film was reissued in 2007, Jeremy Dyson of The Guardian wrote, “Lee’s count is piercingly rapt, a fierce carnal evil burning behind his flashing eyes.”