Biography Bruce Lee Biography Film Actor, Martial Arts Expert, Television Actor (1940–1973) 173 Top of Form Bottom of Form Quick Facts Name Bruce Lee Occupation Film Actor, Martial Arts Expert, Television Actor Birth Date November 27, 1940 Death Date July 20, 1973 Education University of Washington Place of Birth San Francisco, California Place of Death Hong Kong, China AKA Li Jun Fan Bruce Jun Fan Lee Bruce Lee Jun Fan Lee Jun Fan Li Full Name Lee Jun Fan Synopsis Background and Early Career Devoted Teacher Action Hero Breaking Box Office Records Mysterious Death Legacy Cite This Page Bruce Lee was a revered martial artist, actor and filmmaker known for movies like Fists of Fury and Enter the Dragon as well as the technique Jeet Kune Do. IN THESE GROUPS Famous Sagittarians Famous People Born in San Francisco Famous People Born in United States Famous People Born on November 27 Show All Groups Famous People Born in California Famous People Born in 1940 Famous People Who Died in Hong Kong Famous People Who Died in China Famous People Who Died on July 20 Famous People Who Died in 1973 Famous People Named Bruce Mysterious Deaths Sober Celebs Famous Action Movie Stars Famous People in Action Film Famous People Named Lee Famous People Who Were Child Stars Famous People Who Died Mysteriously Famous People Who Died of Unnatural Causes Famous Actors Famous Film Actors Famous Martial Arts Experts Famous Television Actors Famous University of Washington Alumni 1 of 15 « » quotes “The martial arts are ultimately self-knowledge. A punch or a kick is not to knock the hell out of the guy in front, but to knock the hell out of your ego, your fear, or your hang-ups.” “The core of understanding lies in the individual mind and until that is touched, everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth can not be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential selves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge.” “A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.” “There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there—you must go beyond them.” “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.” “As you think, so shall you become.” “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.” “If you love life, dont waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” “There is no such thing as defeat until you admit so yourself, but not until then!” “Be a practical dreamer backed by action.” “Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence—drop them.” “Real living is living for others.” “Learning is never cumulative; it is a movement of knowing which has no beginning and no end.” “The measure of the moral worth of a man is his happiness. The better the man, the more the happiness. Happiness is the synonym of well-being.” —Bruce Lee Bruce Lee - Mini Biography (TV-14) A short biography of the rise and tragic fall of Bruce Lee. Synopsis Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. He was a child actor in Hong Kong who later returned to the U.S. and taught martial arts. He starred in the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-67) and became a major box office draw in The Chinese Connection and Fists of Fury. Shortly before the release of his film Enter the Dragon, he died at the age of 32 on July 20, 1973. Bruce Lee Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story 16 of 18Bruce Lee: Growing up, Bruce was very near-sighted, and wore thick lensed glasses. Only after his acting career took off did he switch to contact lenses. 17 of 18Bruce Lee: Bruce Lee, who stared in the Fists of Fury, is seen on a stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Chinese film at a post office in Zhengzhou, central Chinas Henan province. 18 of 18Bruce Lee: Bruce Lee played Kato in ABC-TVs The Green Hornet, along with Van Williams, who played The Green Hornet. The two were crime fighters similar to Batman and Robin. 1 of 18Bruce Lee: Though his martial arts philosophy was controversial, Lee is widely considered to be the greatest martial arts film actor of the 20th century. 2 of 18Bruce Lee: American actor and martial arts expert, Brandon Lee. the son of legendary Bruce Lee. Unfortunately following in his fathers footsteps, the young Lee died on the set while making martial arts film The Crow in 1993. 3 of 18 4 of 18Bruce Lee: Bruce Lee springs into three of the basic positions of Kung Fu, the ancient Oriental art of self-defense of which Bruce is a master. 5 of 18 More Info Background and Early Career Iconic actor, director and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California, in both the hour and year of the Dragon. His father Lee Hoi Chuen, a Hong Kong opera singer, moved with his wife, Grace Ho, and three children to the United States in 1939; Hoi Chuens fourth child, a son, was born while he was on tour in San Francisco. Lee received the name Bruce from a nurse at his birthing hospital, and his family never used the name during his pre-school years. The future star appeared in his first film at the age of 3 months, when he served as the stand-in for an American baby in Golden Gate Girl (1941). In the early 1940s, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Bruce Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. He also studied dance, winning Hong Kongs cha-cha competition, and would become known for his poetry as well. As a teenager, he was taunted by British students for his Chinese background and later joined a street gang. In 1953, he began to hone his passions into a discipline, studying kung fu (referred to as gung fu in Cantonese) under the tutelage of Master Yip Man. By the end of the decade, Lee moved back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington, initially taking up work as a dance instructor. Devoted Teacher Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery, whom he married in 1964. By that time, Lee had opened his own martial-arts school in Seattle. He and Linda soon moved to California, where Lee opened two more schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. He taught mostly a style he called Jeet Kune Do, or The Way of the Intercepting Fist. Lee was said to have deeply loved being an instructor and treated his students like clan, ultimately choosing the world of cinema as a career so as not to unduly commercialize teaching. Lee and Linda also expanded their immediate family, having two children--Brandon, born in 1965, and Shannon, born in 1969. Action Hero Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired in 26 episodes from 1966 to 67. In the show, which was based on a 1930s radio program, the wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornets sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while a notable film role came in 1969s Marlowe, starring James Garner as the notable detective created by Raymond Chandler. (The screenwriter for the film, Stirling Silliphant, was one of Lees martial arts students. Other Lee students included James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Garner himself.) Lee, who was devoted to a variety of workouts and physical training activities, suffered a major back injury that he gradually recovered from, taking time for self-care and writing. He also came up with the idea that became the basis for the Buddhist monk TV series Kung Fu; yet David Carradine would get the starring role initially slated for Lee due to execs believing that an Asian actor wouldnt pull in audiences as the lead. Confronted with a dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding Asian performers, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in the summer of 1971. Breaking Box Office Records Lee signed a two-film contract, eventually bringing his family over to Hong Kong as well. Fists of Fury was released in late 1971, featuring Lee as a vengeful fighter chasing the villains who had killed his kung-fu master. Combining his smooth Jeet Kune Do athleticism with the high-energy theatrics of his performance in The Green Hornet, Lee was the charismatic center of the film, which set new box office records in Hong Kong. Those records were broken by Lees next film, The Chinese Connection (1972), which, like Fists of Fury, received poor reviews from critics when they were released in the U.S. By the end of 1972, Lee was a major movie star in Asia. He had co-founded with Raymond Chow his own company, Concord Productions, and had released his first directorial feature, Return of the Dragon. Though he had not yet gained stardom in America, he was poised on the brink with his first major Hollywood project, Enter the Dragon. Mysterious Death On July 20, 1973, just one month before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong, China, at the age of 32. The official cause of his sudden and utterly unexpected death was a brain edema, found in an autopsy to have been caused by a strange reaction to a prescription painkiller he was reportedly taking for a back injury. Controversy surrounded Lees death from the beginning, as some claimed he had been murdered. There was also the belief that he might have been cursed, a conclusion driven by Lees obsession with his own early death. (More rumors of the so-called curse circulated in 1993, when Brandon Lee was killed under mysterious circumstances during the filming of The Crow. The 28-year-old actor was fatally shot with a gun that supposedly contained blanks but somehow had a live round lodged deep within its barrel.) Legacy With the posthumous release of Enter the Dragon, Lees status as a film icon was confirmed. The film, said to have a budget of $1 million, went on to gross more than $200 million. Lees legacy helped pave the way for broader depictions of Asian Americans in cinema and created a whole new breed of action hero--a mold filled with varying degrees of success by actors like Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Jackie Chan. Lees life has been depicted in the 1993 film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, based on the 1975 Linda Lee memoir Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, and the 2009 documentary How Bruce Lee Changed the World. And in the summer of 2013, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum opened the exhibition Bruce Lee: Kung Fu. Art. Life. Lees legacy as a premier martial artist continues to be revered as well. Daughter Shannon Lee was largely involved in the 2011 update of her fathers instructional guide Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesnt look right, contact us! Cite This Page APA Style Lee Jun Fan. (2014). The Biography website. Retrieved 05:02, Apr 11, 2014, from biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095. Harvard Style Lee Jun Fan. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography website. Available from: biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095 [Accessed 11 Apr 2014]. MLA Style Lee Jun Fan. 2014. The Biography website. Apr 11 2014 biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095. MHRA Style Lee Jun Fan, The Biography website, 2014, biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095 [accessed Apr 11 2014]. Chicago Style Lee Jun Fan, The Biography website, biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095 (accessed Apr 11 2014). CBE/CSE Style Lee Jun Fan [Internet]. The Biography website; 2014 [cited 2014 Apr 11] Available from: biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095. Bluebook Style Lee Jun Fan, biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095 (last visited Apr 11 2014). AMA Style Lee Jun Fan. The Biography website. 2014. Available at: biography/people/bruce-lee-9542095. 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