1. John Bernard Lee was an English actor, best known for his role as M in the first eleven Eon-produced James Bond films.
19 Facts About Bernard Lee
1. 2.
Bernard Lee was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
3.
Bernard Lee appeared in over one hundred films, as well as on stage and in television dramatisations.
4.
Bernard Lee was known for his roles as authority figures, often playing military characters or policemen in films such as The Third Man, The Blue Lamp, The Battle of the River Plate, and Whistle Down the Wind.
5.
Bernard Lee was born on 10 January 1908, the son of Nellie and Edmund James Bernard Lee.
6.
Bernard Lee was born in either County Cork in what is the Republic of Ireland, or Brentford, Middlesex.
7.
Bernard Lee attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and worked as a fruit porter to pay his fees.
8.
Bernard Lee played comedic roles, such as in the play Ten Minute Alibi with Arthur Askey.
9.
Bernard Lee served with the Royal Sussex Regiment during the Second World War.
10.
Bernard Lee had appeared in Murder in Soho then in Herbert Wilcox's The Courtneys of Curzon Street, playing a colonel alongside Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding and Daphne Slater; the film was a major success and became the biggest hit at the British box office of 1947.
11.
Bernard Lee starred opposite Gregory Peck in The Purple Plain, playing a Royal Air Force medical officer based in Burma during the late Second World War and portrayed Captain Patrick Dove in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's war film The Battle of the River Plate, based upon the battle of the same name.
12.
Bernard Lee starred alongside John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch.
13.
Terence Pettigrew, in his study British film character actors: great names and memorable moments agreed, noting that Bernard Lee was a "gruff, reliable, no-nonsense role character actor", with "kindly eyes, droll manner and expressly Anglo-Saxon level-headedness".
14.
Bernard Lee escaped through a window and ran to get a ladder in an attempt to rescue Gladys, but unhappily was unsuccessful.
15.
Three years after the fire, Bernard Lee married television director's assistant Ursula McHale.
16.
In November 1980, Bernard Lee was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital in London, suffering from stomach cancer.
17.
Bernard Lee died there on 16 January 1981, six days after his 73rd birthday; his wife Ursula was present at his death.
18.
Bernard Lee was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on Friday, January 23,1981.
19.
From 1962 to 1979 Bernard Lee featured in eleven James Bond films as the character M, Bond's superior:.