1940–1973 
MARTIAL ARTIST AND ACTOR CHINA AND UNITED STATES
When I look around I always learn something, and that is to always be yourself . . . express yourself, and have faith in yourself.
—BRUCE LEE
The nighttime rain plastered Bruce Lee’s hair to his head. He stood glaring at another twelve-year-old boy on the dark rooftop of his school. His fists were clenched tight as the other boy laughed and taunted him. A crowd began to gather, and a few boys scrambled up the side of the building to catch a glimpse of the standoff. The Chinese boys gathered behind Bruce and faced a growing gang of angry British boys.
“Hong Kong isn’t yours,” shouted one of the Chinese, and the two sides broke loose. Bruce dodged and ducked. He could see his friends fighting all around him—fists and feet were flying. He managed to land just one good punch before he got hit himself. As he blacked out, Bruce’s last thought was, “I better learn how to defend myself.”
This wasn’t a scene from a famous kung fu movie. No, this was one of Bruce Lee’s first real-life experiences with martial arts.
In 1940, in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a baby was born in the year of the dragon and the hour of the dragon—a double symbol of amazing luck and power to the Chinese. He was called Bruce Lee in English, but his Chinese name, Jun Fan, hinted at his future. It meant “to shake foreign countries.”
Bruce had so much energy, he couldn’t keep still even while he was asleep. He often climbed down from his bunk bed and strolled around the apartment . . . sleepwalking!
Bruce and his parents moved to Hong Kong, where his parents were from, when he was a baby, and soon their apartment was crowded with four more children. It became even more crowded when an aunt moved in with her five children, a maid, and assorted fish, cats, and dogs! Bruce bounced from crowded room to crowded room with such energy that his family nicknamed him Mo Si Ting, or “never sits still.” The only thing that could keep the wild boy in one place was a good book, which he devoured in spite of his thick glasses.
Bruce’s father was a performer in the famous Cantonese Opera, so Bruce grew up around actors. He was just three months old when he first appeared in a film! By age eighteen, Bruce had appeared in over twenty Chinese movies. Audiences called him Little Dragon Lee and loved him for his vivid expressions and intense emotion. But the attention for these small roles was nothing compared to the fame that would come later.
During Bruce’s teen years, tensions were high in Hong Kong. The British had colonized the island, and many Chinese people were angry. They experienced plenty of racism from the colonizers, and fights between British and Chinese boys were common. After twelve-year-old Bruce took a beating in a brawl, he decided to learn martial arts.
In Hong Kong it was as common for boys to learn kung fu as it was for American boys to learn baseball. For five years, Bruce studied kung fu six hours a day, seven days a week. When he turned seventeen, he landed his first major role in Ren hai gu hong (The Orphan), a Chinese movie about a troubled kid. In the movie Bruce got to show off his fighting skills. It was a success, and soon he was offered more action roles. His mother, however, was against her son working in action-packed movies. Bruce had been in trouble at school for bad behavior, and she was anxious about his fighting. After a lot of worrying, she sent him to the United States to live with friends. When Bruce took off for America, he was eighteen years old and had nothing but $100 in his pocket and butterflies in his stomach.
Bruce was lightning fast. He once put a dime in a reporter’s hand and told him to close his fist before he could grab the dime. The reporter closed his hand fast, but when he opened his fist again, the dime was gone. He had a penny instead! Bruce moved so fast, the reporter didn’t even see him.
He moved in with his parents’ friends in Seattle, Washington, and worked at their restaurant as a busboy. Between work, kung fu practice, and high school, Bruce taught martial arts to his friends. When he started college at the University of Washington, he had so many students that he launched his own martial arts school.
Bruce had a different kind of fight on his hands when he fell in love. Linda Emery was white, and in the 1960s, mixed-race relationships were not accepted. But Bruce and Linda were in love, and they got married anyway. Soon they had a baby boy named Brandon and moved to San Francisco, where Bruce opened another martial arts school.
Bruce’s kung fu reputation grew, and it wasn’t long before Hollywood discovered him. While he won some roles, including the role of Kato, the kung fu–fighting chauffeur on the television series The Green Hornet, Bruce was frustrated with the racism he found in the show-biz industry. There were very few roles for Asian actors, and even roles that were written for Asians were often given to white actors instead.
His acting career stalled when he injured his back in 1970. Doctors told him he would never be able to do martial arts again, but Bruce ignored them and pushed himself to recover. While he was stuck in bed, he wrote his philosophy of fighting, which he called Jeet Kune Do. The philosophy covers both the physical techniques to Bruce’s brand of kung fu and how to find inner harmony through the martial arts. It is now a bestselling book called Tao of Jeet Kune Do.
Discouraged by Hollywood’s prejudice against Asians, Bruce returned to Hong Kong to make films. He was surprised to discover he was already a star there—The Green Hornet was a hugely popular television show on the island. Fully recovered from his injury, Bruce made his first hit movie, The Big Boss, which became Hong Kong’s top-selling movie. Next, he did The Chinese Connection, in which he played a martial arts instructor who fights against racist Japanese characters. The success of this movie made Bruce such a star and hero in China that he was able to write, cast, direct, and act in his next movie, The Way of the Dragon.
IN ENTER THE DRAGON, Bruce never actually hit his opponents. He missed them by centimeters. In recording sound for the movie, they snapped chicken bones to sound like a punch or kick.
Now it was Hollywood’s turn to come crawling back. American producers who had told Bruce he was “too Asian” before were now begging him to star in their movies. He filmed just one American film, Enter the Dragon, but sadly never got to see it on the big screen. Just after filming, Bruce collapsed from a severe headache. Doctors told him it was caused by a mysterious swelling of his brain. He later took a pill to fix the headache and went to sleep. He never woke up. Bruce had no idea that he was allergic to the pill. It caused his brain to swell again and killed him. He died at age thirty-three, right at the peak of his career.
Some fans call Enter the Dragon the most famous kung fu movie ever made. With his courage and talent, Bruce practically invented the kung fu movie, paved the way for minority actors in Hollywood, and opened doors for current action stars like Jackie Chan and Jason Statham. With his creation of a new kung fu philosophy, Jeet Kune Do, Bruce also revolutionized how people think about the martial arts. Bruce never let other people’s prejudices stand in the way of his dreams. He opened the minds of audiences around the world and truly lived up to his name “to shake foreign countries.”
I am going to rock the world by becoming an actor. I think I am really good at acting and that it will be a good career. My hero is Jackie Chan because he is so cool and funny. I want to become an actor because I grew up on movies.
MICHAEL MCGONEGAL 
AGE 12