Short answers, pulled from the story.
Saruman means "man of skill or cunning" in the Mercian dialect of Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien used the Mercian dialect of Old English to represent the Language of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings, and the word saru carries associations with both cleverness and treachery.
Christopher Lee portrayed Saruman in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) and reprised the role in The Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014). Lee posthumously provided archived voice recordings for the 2024 anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
Peter Jackson reasoned that showing Saruman's fate after the Battle of Helm's Deep would be anticlimactic in the second film and too retrospective in the third. Christopher Lee said the decision "shocked" him. The cut scenes, in which Saruman falls from Orthanc after being stabbed by Wormtongue, were included in the Extended Edition DVD release.
Saruman first appeared in a rough narrative outline dated August 1940, during a fourth phase of writing. In that early draft he was called "Saramond the White" or "Saramund the Grey" and was described as having fallen under Sauron's influence rather than acting independently.
Saruman converts the green valley of Isengard into a forge and army base, and later subjects the Shire to a similar industrial takeover under the alias Sharkey. Critics including Patrick Curry link Tolkien's portrayal of this industrial evil to his hostility toward the urban development he witnessed growing up in the West Midlands in the early 20th century, and identify Saruman as a symbol of the destructive effects of industrialization and imperialism.
Saruman is murdered in the Shire by Gríma Wormtongue, the servant he had long beaten and taunted. After Wormtongue finally snaps and cuts Saruman's throat, Saruman's body shrivels to skin and bones and a pale shrouded figure rises from the corpse. This death scene was not part of the original manuscript and was added by Tolkien when he reviewed the page proofs.