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Film legend Sir Christopher Lee has died aged 93.

Lee became a star thanks to his role as Dracula before starring in Lord of the Rings and as one of the great Bond villains.

The veteran actor died at 8.30am on Sunday at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, sources close to his family said.

He had been treated there for respiratory problems and heart failure over the preceding three weeks and turned 93 in hospital.

Although he made his name in Hammer horror, he told the Telegraph in an interview in 2011: “Please don’t describe me as a ‘horror legend’. I moved on from that.”

He starred as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun and as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man.

He was knighted in 2009 and received a Bafta fellowship in 2011.

He had also recently signed up for a new film, The 11th, which was due to start filming in November.

In an earlier interview he had said he would never retire: “I hate being idle. As dear Boris [Karloff] used to say, when I die I want to die with my boots on.”

His film career started in 1947 with a role in gothic romance Corridor of Mirrors but it wasn’t until the late 50s, when Lee worked with Hammer, that he started gaining fame.

His first role with the studio was The Curse of Frankenstein and it was the first of 20 films that he made with Peter Cushing.

Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was born in 1922 in London, England. He and his older sister, Xandra, were raised by their parents, Contessa Estelle Marie (Carandini di Sarzano) and Geoffrey Trollope Lee, a professional soldier,