Bruce Lee

Net Worth

$10,000,000

Born in (City)

California

Born in (Country)

United States

Date of Birth

27th December, 1940

Date of Death

20th December, 1973

Mother

Grace Ho

Father

Lee Hoi-chuen

Children

Brandon Lee
Shannon Lee

About

A cultural icon, famous martial arts artist, movie artist, and ’artist of life’ Bruce Lee taught us how to be our truest self and be in harmony with the world. Born in 1940 as Lee Siu Loong in San Francisco. Bruce was raised in Hong Kong and began his career very early as a child actor. At the age of 18 he came to the US and worked in the restaurant as a family friend. After pursuing a degree in Philosophy he began teaching gung fu in Seattle and soon went on to open a school for the same, named Jun Fan Gung Fu. During the same time, he got married to Linda who was one of his students. Bruce fathered two children Brandon and Shannon and absolutely adored them.

Early Life

Bruce learned gung fu under the guidance of Master Yip Man who was a renowned teacher of Wing Chun style Gung Fu. Bruce’s martial art style was built on the core ideas of simplicity, directness, and personal freedom. His self-expression, equality, and pioneering innovation continue to inspire people all around the world. After years of hard work, intense training and soulful philosophical learning Bruce developed his own style of Gung Fu called Jeet Kune Do, “The Way of The Intercepting Fist”. Apart from being masterful in gung fu he was also a terrific Cha-Cha dancer. By the age of 18 had appeared in 20 films. His passion for gung fu inspired a desire that delved into philosophical underpinnings and many of his written essays during those years would relate philosophical principles to certain martial arts techniques. Bruce’s did not receive success very easily. He wanted to pursue a career in Hollywood but faced a lot of resistance. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”, he would say. It was his relentless hard work and dedication that culminated in his first Hollywood Hong Kong co-production, Enter the Dragon after which he went on to write and direct The Return of The Dragon.

Road to Success

Lee’s career shines as one of the earliest paradigm shifts in Asian representation. It was only after his untimely death that people started documenting his life, interviewing family, friends, co-actors, directors. Different directors have portrayed a different picture of Lee. Bao Nguyen’s Be Water, a new documentary for ESPN’s 30 f0r 30 series about Lee, focuses on the actor’s years in Hong Kong and seeks to reclaim his legend. According to Nguyen who is a Vietnamese American filmmaker the documentary is an intervention within a culture that has reduced Lee to a stereotype, which both raises Lee back up and humanizes him. Nguyen argues that his film is more than a celebration ’it’s an insistence on history with a legacy that lives on in every person who bends, jumps, and breaks the molds the majoritarian gaze tries to fit them into. Like water.’ Linda Lee Cadwell published her first biography about her late husband, Bruce Lee: The Man I Only Knew, in 1975. it was her second biography, The Bruce Lee Story (1989)—a revised version that smoothed out the rougher, more personal edges of the first with the help of co-author Tom Bleecker—that would begin to transform Bruce Lee into Saint Bruce.

Failures

In 1956, due to poor academic performance and possibly poor conduct, he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College, where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a teacher, and coach of the school boxing team. After Lee was involved in several street fights, his parents decided that he needed to be trained in the martial arts. Lee's friend William Cheung introduced him to Ip Man but he was rejected from learning Wing Chun Kung Fu under him because of the long-standing rule in the Chinese Martial Arts world to not teach foreigners. Bruce Lee wore contact lenses and actually failed his physical exam in 1963 and was deemed physically unacceptable by the U.S. Army Draft Board.

Achievements

Hong Kong Film Award for Lifetime Achievement|Hong Kong Film Award for Star of Century

Quotes

Showing off is the fool's idea of glory.
As you think, so shall you become.
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.