When the kung fu legend Bruce Lee is on screen , it ’s toilsome to take your eyes off of him . deal Lee ’s cocky swagger as he swipes at his nose and beckons his opposer — or sometimes a roomful of opposite — to give it their best shot . You recognize how this is going to end , with a punishing flurry ofkicksand slug , and Lee standing over his vanquished foe flex his taut trunk .
The Bruce Lee made renowned in celluloid like 1973 ’s " Enter the Dragon " is the ultimate badass , an unvanquishable kung fu warrior , and for most Westerners that ’s the only Bruce Lee they ever knew . Lee died under occult circumstances at only 32 class old , just as hisHollywoodstar was beginning to smoothen .
But who was the genuine Bruce Lee ? And how did his childhood and upbringing in Hong Kong and America help shape the Isle of Man who would become an histrion and dancer days before he became a kung fu master ? For answers , we spoke withMatthew Polly , author of the eye - spread out biography , " Bruce Lee : A Life . " Here are seven essential things to know about this iconic star .
1. Lee Was Born in the U.S.A. and Had Jewish Ancestry
In America , we think of Bruce Lee as a Chinese actor who made it heavy in Hollywood , but Bruce was actually assume in America and descend from an ethnically diverse family tree diagram .
In his biography , Polly reveals that Lee ’s paternal peachy granddaddy was aDutch - Jewish merchantnamed Mozes Hartog Bosman , who sweep to Hong Kong in the 1850s with the Dutch East India Company . Bosman eventually became the Dutch embassador to Hong Kong and had six tike with his Chinese paramour . One of those children , Ho Kom - tong , grew fabulously wealthy and had a British fancy woman in addition to his married woman and 13 doxy . Bruce Lee ’s mother was the 30th child of Ho , who was half Jewish , and his British girl .
Bruce ’s father , on the other hand , was 100 - percent Han Chinese and born into poverty . He get out through his singing representative , becoming a famous Cantonese opera house star and actor . He was touring in the United States when Bruce was hold in San Francisco in 1940 . Bruce ’s parent named him Li Jun Fan , and a nurse at the hospital suggest Bruce as his English name . The Lee family moved back to Hong Kong when Bruce was still a baby , and Lee mature up attending English - voice communication private schools .
Throughout his life , Lee bounce back and forth between two worlds , Chinese and American , but never felt like he fit full into either one . In China , he was a Eurasian with an American passport . In America , he was a Chinese guy with a peculiar idiom . Polly thinks this is key to read Lee ’s persona .
" He did n’t quite fit in anywhere and I think it ’s why he has this blanket ingathering to various groups , " says Polly . " He has this foreigner status — he ’s not of any one kindred . "
2. He Was a Small, Sickly Kid Who Became a Street Fighter
Bruce ’s early old age in Hong Kong coincided with a brutal three - class occupation by Imperial Japan . Lee was small to begin with , but was further damp by exacting intellectual nourishment rations and a cholera epidemic . He grew into a frail and skinny boy with one leg shorter than the other , an undescended testicle and bad acne .
But Lee was also a whirlwind of Energy Department and a natural - born troublemaker . He invariably pick fights to prove his manhood , and Polly says he earned a reputation in the Hong Kong streets not as a mobster , incisively , but a " middle - class tough guy . "
" Bruce Lee fits into the figure of a young son who felt weaker and had a bit of a check on his articulatio humeri , " says Polly . " He got very concerned in physical ascendency in society to fancy himself out in a world in which he felt threatened . "
When Lee was a teenager , he got call on the carpet by another kidskin who was studying Wing Chun , a school of kung fu or Taiwanese - style warriorlike arts . Unwilling to accept defeat , Lee decided to up his game and began analyze kung fu at the age of 15 or 16 .
3. He Was an Actor (and Dancer) First
Lee ’s opera house singer father also acted in Cantonese movies and musical theater , and Bruce grew up on movie sets . He first appeared on pic as an infant stand - in at just 3 months old , but his first star role as a child actor was in a popular 1950 Hong Kong motion picture squall " The Kid " film when Lee was 10 . Polly says that he even debut some of his classic move in " The Kid , " like swiping at his nozzle before a fight and ripping open his shirt .
" The Kyd " was a huge success , and Bruce was ratify on to do sequel that would have made him the Cantonese MaCaulay Culkin , but his father stepped in . The elder Lee wanted his youngster to be Doctor and attorney , not histrion , and Bruce was constantly getting in trouble at schooling anyway . His Fatherhood squashed his chance at small fry stardom , but Bruce act on and off in little Hong Kong movies throughout the 1950s .
" By the time Bruce was 18 , he had appear in 20 Cantonese movies and none of them were kung fu flicks , " says Polly . " Watching those 20 movies , you see that Bruce was an player first who later becomes a martial artist . "
Lee was also atalented dancer , once win a Hong Kong " cha - cha " contest .
4. Lee’s First Hollywood Break Was as Kung Fu Instructor to the Stars
Bruce ’s parent send him off to America for college , where the spoilt kid from Hong Kong got his first taste of suffer himself . In Seattle , between classes at the University of Washington , Lee work as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant and slumber there in a glorified closet . Word of his soldierly graphics skills get around and soon Bruce was teaching some kung fu category on the side .
It was n’t long before Bruce ’s side gig shadow his subject area . Lee dropped out of school and hatched a architectural plan to open a enfranchisement of martial arts schools along the West Coast . " It was going to be the McDonald ’s of kung fu , " jokes Polly . To bone up business , Lee trip to Los Angeles to give a presentation at a karate tournament where he catch the attention of a TV producer . This led to Bruce ’s first and only role on American television as the tight - fisted chum Kato on the forgettable 1966 series " The Green Hornet . "
The show was canceled after just one season , but Bruce hung around in Hollywood hop for his next big break . He scored a few number character over the next four years , but Polly says Bruce mostly made his living as a kung fu instructor to the Hollywood elite .
" Steve McQueen was one of his student , so was James Coburn and Roman Polanski , " says Polly . " Bruce was charging the eq of $ 1,000 an hour . "
5. Back in Hong Kong, a Kung Fu Legend Was Born
Even with his high - visibility clients , Bruce got himself into some financial trouble and require some fast hard cash to apprehend out of debt . He decided to aviate back to Hong Kong for a few months , take some roles in " cheapo " kung fu pic and garner enough money to come back to Los Angeles .
The first of these Hong Kong picture was call " The Big Boss , " and Lee was n’t even supposed to be the lead . It was already in output when he make it , Polly aver , but Lee was " so magnetic they killed off the star actor and made him the superstar . "
The movie was the first to boast his unique style of fight choreography . At the time , agitate scenes in most kung fu movies look like terpsichore turn , but Bruce ’s fight stage dancing , informed by long time of soldierlike arts mastery , bundle a impact .
" What he was doing was a kind of heighten realism , " says Polly . " When he hit somebody , it find like a genuine hit , like there ’s real fierceness go on . What Bruce create is still the dominant form of combat stage dancing in Hollywood movies to this twenty-four hour period . "
" The Big Boss " was a breakout hit and impel Lee into a new stratosphere of celebrity , at least in Asia .
" ' The film blew the box office phonograph recording out of the water and suddenly Bruce was like the Beatles in Hong Kong and all of Southeast Asia , " enjoin Polly .
Bruce follow up with two more wildly popular kung fu movies filmed in Hong Kong , " fist of Fury " and " The Way of the Dragon , " that beguile the attention of American manufacturer . It was clip to parlay Bruce ’s Asian stardom into the Hollywood career of his dreams .
6. His Death Launched a Thousand Conspiracy Theories
1973 ’s " Enter the Dragon " was supposed to be the film that made Bruce Lee a home name . And it was , but Lee did n’t live to see it .
A calendar month before the film premiered in the United States , Lee was at his schoolmarm ' flat in Hong Kong when he complain of a headache , drive a prescription pain reliever and lie down down for a pile . He never woke up . He was only 32 year old , leaving his untried married woman Linda to manage for their two children , Brandon and Shannon .
The odd circumstances andmysterious nature of his deathbecame fresh fish for conspiracy theories — that he was pop by ninjas or render the " trace of death " by a rival kung fu maestro — but the official cause of death was listed as a brain edema due to an allergic reaction to the pain in the neck comforter , which he had been taking for month for a back wound .
Polly thinks that a better explanation is heating system stroke . Ten days before his death , Lee collapsed while dubbing a pic in an un - zephyr - check room in Hong Kong ’s sweltering heat . The Clarence Day he die was also exceptionally raging , and Lee spent part of the good afternoon practicing move for an upcoming role . His body may only have yield out .
" enrol the Dragon " became a measure of popular culture , introducing Western audiences to the archetype of the kung fu hero , and garner Bruce the posthumous fame that had eluded him in life .
" Before ' Enter the Dragon , ' Bruce was essentially a no - name role player from an obscure telly show , " says Polly , " and then the movie came out and he became an outside sensation a month after his dying . "
7. He’s the Reason Martial Arts Are So Popular in the West
" Bruce Lee is perhaps the only iconic figure from the 20th century who died before he became famous , " says Polly , " and that ’s why he became a mythic fig . "
Lee did n’t live long enough to give endless press interviews , to go to glitzy prize show or to get drunk and wreck his athletics car on Sunset Boulevard . One of the advantages of choke young , says Polly , is that people can fancy their own image onto you . This is how Bruce Lee becomes the fabled kung fu hero and the ultimate warrior .
And on a ethnic spirit level , Polly says that it ’s hard to overestimate the influence that Bruce Lee ’s films had on popularizing the martial arts in the West .
" Before ' enrol the Dragon , ' there were about 10,000 hoi polloi who studied the martial arts in America , " say Polly , himself an enthusiast , " and now it ’s like 40 million . He introduced more westerners to Asian finish than any other physical body in modern history . "
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