'Saruman' mum on Harry Potter role

By HELEN BARLOW

Even if his name has been mentioned as a contender to take over Richard Harris' Professor Dumbledore role in the third Harry Potter film, Christopher Lee is distancing himself from expressing any interest in the part.

If he does take it on, he might scare half the children to death, as one look from Lee's sinister glance can chill more than any of the modern special effects a movie can muster.

Lee's signature screen role after all, was as the scariest of all villains, Count Dracula, a character he played first in 1958's Dracula and then in numerous Hammer horror films.

The actor became a horror icon with his definitive portrayals of Frankenstein and Chinese criminal master Fu Manchu and Bond

villian Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun.

Standing 1.95m and with a long, gaunt face, wide eyes and bushy eyebrows, Lee has a perfect stature for lording it over his potential victims. He is still a class act who brings a sense of intelligence to his horrifying villains.

That he has specialised in playing such meanies all his life has not necessarily pleased the 80-year-old actor, even if it has kept him busy.

Lee is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having made the most screen appearances, around 300 to date.

If Lee has excess baggage from his past, it's certainly treating him well of late -- he has hit a career high by appearing in two of the biggest movie sagas in history: The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and the still-to-be-filmed Star Wars Episode III.

Even if these movies are made on the broadest scale imaginable, Lee is still able to take over the screen as the evil wizard Saruman and as Count Dooku.

Interestingly, he has such a presence that he managed to organise it so the films were shot across the Tasman from each other.

"A strange coincidence, but the films are very different from each other." But what they had in

common was using advances in technology.

"George Lucas stopped making Star Wars because he couldn't do what he wanted to do, so he waited 15 or so years. The reason The Lord of the Rings hadn't been made is the same, but now the technology is there to create a fantasy world, and the trilogy of films, making three films at once, is an extraordinary achievement.

"There's been nothing like it and shooting in that unique geography where the vegetation is slightly different, slightly alien, was incredible."

Lee was particularly impressed with Peter Jackson. "The little man has everything a director needs. And the casting is so faultless -- you can't see anyone else but the character. You look at somebody and there they are."

Originally, the actor wanted to play the good wizard Gandalf, but the part went to Sir Ian McKellen. "Anyone reading those books would want to play Gandalf because he's an amazing conglomeration of different parts of human nature.

"He is a heroic figure, with a great sense of humour, and what they say about both of us is true: 'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because they are subtle and quick to anger'," he intones in a deep, dark voice.

As for age creeping up on him, Lee, once famous for doing his own stunts, admits it's not as easy these days.

"Mentally there are certain things I can't do -- my hands and legs won't work as fast any more. There's no great pleasure in growing old, in a physical sense," he says.

Still, nobody does it more gracefully and, dare we say, with such fortitude for his profession than Christopher Lee.

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