Bruce Lee Hongkonger Actor Known for Enter the Dragon

Early life

Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun-fan on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, where his parents were visiting during a Cantonese opera tour. His father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was an opera singer, and his mother was Grace Ho. The family returned to Hong Kong when he was a few months old, and he grew up there.

Because of his father's profession, Lee entered the film business as a child. He appeared as a baby in Golden Gate Girl (1941) and took the lead in The Kid (1950). By the time he was eighteen he had acted in around twenty films. As a teenager he trained in Wing Chun under Ip Man, practiced tai chi, and won a Hong Kong schools boxing tournament in 1958. He also won the city's cha-cha championship that year.

In April 1959 his parents sent him to the United States. He stayed briefly in San Francisco, then moved to Seattle, where he finished high school at Edison Technical School while working in a restaurant. He enrolled at the University of Washington in 1961, with drama as his official major, and later left in early 1964.

Career

In Seattle he started teaching friends the approach he called Jun Fan Gung Fu, and he opened his first school there, the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. He founded a second school in Oakland with James Yimm Lee in 1964. That year he gave a demonstration at the Long Beach International Karate Championships, where he showed the one-inch punch and argued that martial arts needed modernizing. The exhibition led to an audition for television producer William Dozier. Lee later opened a school in Los Angeles, where his students included Chuck Norris, Sharon Tate and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Lee played Kato in the ABC series The Green Hornet (1966 to 1967), which introduced him to American audiences. He also appeared with the same character in crossover episodes of Batman, had guest roles in Ironside and Longstreet, and acted in the film Marlowe (1969). He developed Jeet Kune Do, which he described as a way of the intercepting fist, from 1967 onward. It combined footwork from boxing, kicks from kung fu and technique from fencing, and it stressed practicality over fixed forms.

Unhappy with supporting parts in the United States, he returned to Hong Kong in 1971 and signed with the studio Golden Harvest. His first leading adult role was Cheng Chao-an in The Big Boss (1971), which was a major success across Asia. Fist of Fury (1972), in which he played Chen Zhen, broke the box-office records set by the first film. For The Way of the Dragon (1972), he wrote and directed the film and starred as Tang Lung, and he cast Chuck Norris as his opponent. Enter the Dragon (1973) was the first film produced jointly by his company Concord, Golden Harvest and Warner Bros.

Lee died on July 20, 1973, a few days before Enter the Dragon was released. He had been shooting Game of Death earlier, including a fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Robert Clouse completed the film with other actors and archive footage, and it came out in 1978. Footage Lee had shot himself was recovered 22 years later and used in the documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey. A television series based on his idea, Warrior, was produced for Cinemax and ran for three seasons until 2023.

Recognition

Time magazine named Lee among the 100 most important people of the 20th century. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2015. His films are credited with raising the popularity of Hong Kong martial arts cinema internationally and with changing how fight scenes were choreographed.

Personal life

Lee married Linda Lee Cadwell in 1964. They had two children, Brandon and Shannon Lee. Shannon later worked with producers on the series Warrior.