Christopher Lee's real-life experience made Saruman's death in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King even more brutal. Saruman's story was controversially incomplete in the theatrical cuts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lee fell out with the trilogy's director, Peter Jackson, following the premiere of the theatrical cut of The Return of the King, when he discovered that he had been cut from the film entirely. Jackson eventually restored his scenes in the extended edition of The Return of the King and the two eventually made up and worked together again on The Hobbit trilogy, despite Saruman's absence from Tolkein's novel.

Before being cast as Saruman in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Christopher Lee was a highly acclaimed actor, known for his legendary role as Count Dracula in seven Hammer Horror movies, usually alongside his best friend Peter Cushing. (Christopher Lee and...