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Quick Facts
- NAME: Bruce Lee
- OCCUPATION: Film Actor, Television Actor, Martial Arts Expert
- 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
- Originally: Lee Yuen Kam
Best Known For
Bruce Lee was an actor, film producer and director, and the martial arts expert who founded the Jeet Kune Doe martial arts system.
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Bruce Lee - Mini Biography (4:10)
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Bruce Lee - Mini Biography
A short biography of the rise and tragic fall of Bruce Lee.
Eddie Murphy - Admiration for Bruce Lee
Eddie Murphy describes his admiration for Bruce Lee's ability to reach an audience.
Steve McQueen - Mini Biography
A short biography of Steve McQueen who scored big with his first hit film, "The Magnificent Seven." Considered a rebel from an early age, his outsider persona earned him the nickname "The King of Cool."
Chuck Norris - Fighting with Bruce Lee
Chuck Norris discusses meeting Bruce Lee and working with him in their early films.
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Play NowBruce Lee. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 07:00, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095.
Bruce Lee. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095 [Accessed 19 May 2013].
"Bruce Lee." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 07:00 http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095.
"Bruce Lee," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095 [accessed May 19, 2013].
"Bruce Lee," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095 (accessed May 19, 2013).
Bruce Lee [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095.
Bruce Lee, http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095 (last visited May 19, 2013).
Bruce Lee. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-lee-9542095. Accessed May 19, 2013.
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 Lee’s 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 founded his own production company,
Concord Pictures, and had released his first directorial feature, Way of the Dragon. Though he had not yet gained stardom in America, he was poised on the brink with his second directorial feature and first major Hollywood project, Enter the Dragon.
Death and Legacy
On July 20, 1973, just one month before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong 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 Lee’s death from the beginning, as some claimed he had been murdered. He was also widely believed to have been cursed, a conclusion driven by Lee’s obsession with his own early death. (The tragedy of the so-called curse was compounded in 1993, when Brandon Lee was killed under similarly 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.)
With the posthumous release of Enter the Dragon, Lee’s status as a film icon was confirmed. The film went on to gross a total of over $200 million, and Lee’s legacy created a whole new breed of action hero—a mold filled with varying degrees of success by such actors as Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Jackie Chan.
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