Lee was born on 27 May 1922 in Belgravia, London, the son of Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee of the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps and his wife, Countess Estelle Marie. Lee's father fought in the Boer War and First World War, mother was an Edwardian beauty, painted by Sir John Lavery, Oswald Birley and Olive Snell and sculpted by Claire Sheridan; Her ancestry can be traced back to Charlemagne. Lee's maternal great grandfather, Jerome Carandini, the Marquis of Sarzano, was an Italian political refugee; His wife, Lee's great grandmother, was the English-born opera singer Mary Garandini. He had an older sister, Sandra Carandini Lee.
Lee's parents separated when he was four years old and divorced two years later. During this time, his mother took his sister and him to Wengen in Switzerland. After joining Miss Fisher's Academy in the Territet, he made his acting debut as Rumpelstiltskin. They then returned to London, where Lee attended Wagner's private school at Queen's Gate, and his mother married Harcourt George St Croix Ross, a banker and Ian Fleming's uncle. Fleming, who wrote the James Bond novels, thus became Lee's stepfather. The family moved to Fulham, living next door to actor Eric Maturin. One night, he was introduced to Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of Grigori Rasputin, whom Lee was to play many years later.
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