59 Fun Facts About Bruce Lee

Raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee was born in which American city?

San Francisco. His parents were living in its Chinatown during his father's working tour of America, and the birth made him a US citizen, which let him move back at 18.

Bruce Lee's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was a star of what?

Cantonese opera. His father also acted in films, which is how Bruce reached the screen at three months old, cast as a baby girl, and made about 20 films by 18.

Bruce Lee's Chinese screen name, Lee Siu-lung, makes him which kind of dragon?

Little. He was born in both the hour and the year of the Dragon, and Hong Kong films billed him as Lee the Little Dragon from boyhood.

In his widow's telling, Bruce Lee's mother named her American-born son Jun-fan because it meant what?

Return again. His widow wrote that his mother felt he would one day go back to the land of his birth; other writers render the name 'to arouse or shake the foreign countries'.

Bruce Lee famously urged people to empty the mind and be formless and shapeless, like what?

Water. The lines were first heard as dialogue, spoken by the martial arts teacher he played in the 1971 TV series Longstreet; Lee then recited the scene himself in a television interview.

Which weapon did Bruce Lee turn into a worldwide craze by whirling it in his 1970s films?

Nunchaku. The craze worried the authorities: British film censors cut nunchaku scenes for years, and several US states banned owning the weapon.

Before Wing Chun, which martial art did the young Bruce Lee learn from his father?

Tai chi. His father practised it and took the boy along, but the slow, flowing moves had scant appeal for a child the family nicknamed 'never sits still'.

Which Wing Chun grandmaster taught the teenage Bruce Lee in Hong Kong?

Ip Man. He brought Wing Chun, then an obscure southern style, to 1950s Hong Kong, and through pupils like Lee it spread around the world.

What did Bruce Lee's Wing Chun classmates cite when they pressed their teacher to drop him?

His mixed ancestry. His mother was part European, and classmates he had outsparred used it against him; the master's way round was to let senior students keep training him privately.

Besides a schools boxing title, what else did Bruce Lee win in Hong Kong in 1958?

The Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship. He kept a notebook listing 108 cha-cha steps, and after sailing to America the next year he earned his first dollars there by teaching dance.

Why did Bruce Lee's parents send him from Hong Kong to America at 18?

Trouble with the police. After a rooftop fight left another boy badly beaten, his mother had to sign for his release, and she soon proposed that he claim his American citizenship.

Which future Hong Kong superstar had bit parts as a teenager in Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon?

Jackie Chan. He doubled for the villain Lee kicks through a wall in Fist of Fury, then played a guard whose neck Lee snaps in Enter the Dragon.

Which heavyweight champion did Bruce Lee study on film, working the boxer's moves into his own fighting style?

Muhammad Ali. Lee watched film of his fights over and over for the footwork, and mocked the rooted stances of classical styles as stability with zero mobility.

Bruce Lee said philosophy, but which major does the University of Washington's alumni magazine list for him?

Drama. He took philosophy and psychology classes there from 1961, then left in 1964 without a degree to teach martial arts full time.

In which city did Bruce Lee open his second martial arts school in 1964, with James Yimm Lee?

Oakland. He moved in with James Yimm Lee, a local martial artist twenty years his senior, who introduced him to the promoter of the Long Beach tournament that got him noticed.

At a 1964 karate tournament in Long Beach, what did Bruce Lee do on just two fingers of one hand?

Push-ups. A celebrity hairdresser in the crowd raved about the display to a client, a TV producer hunting for a Chinese actor, and Lee was soon called to a screen test.

Which signature strike did Bruce Lee demonstrate at the 1964 Long Beach karate championships, knocking a man backward?

The one-inch punch. Its power starts far from the fist: a Stanford biomechanics researcher traced it from both knees snapping straight, through the twisting hips, to the arm.

Bruce Lee's breakthrough 1964 demonstration came at a tournament run by Ed Parker, karate teacher to which singer?

Elvis Presley. Parker gave the unknown 23-year-old a slot, and Lee used it to tell a hall full of karate masters that their classical styles were too rigid for a real fight.

Bruce Lee's controversial 1964 private match was against which martial artist?

Wong Jack-man. Accounts of the closed-door fight still differ, but Lee came away winded and dissatisfied, and began rebuilding both his fitness training and his fighting style.

Producer William Dozier first auditioned Bruce Lee for a pilot about the son of which fictional detective?

Charlie Chan. The pilot, Number One Son, was scrapped, but the producer kept Lee under option and a year later cast him as a masked sidekick instead.

Bruce Lee played the sidekick in The Green Hornet, but who played the title character?

Van Williams. He left acting to run a communications business, but came back in 1993 for one scene of the biopic Dragon, playing the director of his own old show.

Bruce Lee's Green Hornet sidekick also appeared in which series?

Batman. The two shows shared a producer, who shelved a detective series planned for Lee and made The Green Hornet instead once Batman became a hit.

What problem did Bruce Lee's fight scenes cause the camera crew on The Green Hornet?

He moved too fast. On film his kicks and punches barely registered, so the camera operators had to ask him to slow down.

Which judoka and stuntman befriended Bruce Lee on The Green Hornet and swapped grappling for striking lessons?

Gene LeBell. He once hoisted Lee onto his shoulders and ran around the set while Lee shouted 'Put me down or I'll kill you'; the two went on to trade techniques.

Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do translates as what?

Way of the intercepting fist. Lee chose the name in 1967 and then played it down, writing that if it ever set his art apart as one more style it should be 'wiped out', since it was 'just a name'.

Which screenwriter, a Bruce Lee student, wrote him into Marlowe and Longstreet?

Stirling Silliphant. He also flew to India with Lee to scout locations for a martial arts film of their own, The Silent Flute, before the studio dropped it.

In Marlowe (1969), how does Bruce Lee's hired heavy try to scare the detective?

Trashes his office. Lee kicks the room apart around James Garner's Marlowe; it was his first Hollywood film role, and the scene got him noticed.

Which actress did Bruce Lee coach for her fight against Nancy Kwan in The Wrecking Crew?

Sharon Tate. Her husband Roman Polanski became a student too and flew Lee to Switzerland for lessons; after her murder in 1969, the director briefly counted Lee among his suspects.

Bruce Lee's widow said a Hollywood studio reworked his pitch for a series called The Warrior into which show?

Kung Fu. The studio said two writers had created the show before Lee's pitch; either way, its Shaolin monk went to David Carradine, an actor with no martial arts background.

Back in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee found The Green Hornet had been airing there under what name?

The Kato Show. Renamed for the sidekick he played, it had made Lee a star at home without his knowing; he arrived to find himself mobbed by fans.

Which 1971 film gave Bruce Lee his first leading role as an adult?

The Big Boss. Shot cheaply in a Thai village, it broke Hong Kong's box-office record, held until then by The Sound of Music.

Which character does Bruce Lee play in Fist of Fury?

Chen Zhen. The character is invented, though the master he avenges, Huo Yuanjia, was a real martial artist who died in 1910; other stars later took up the role in film and television.

In The Way of the Dragon, Bruce Lee's character duels Chuck Norris inside which Roman landmark?

The Colosseum. Lee wrote and directed the film himself, and staged the duel with no crowd at all: its only spectator is a kitten.

Which actor played Bruce Lee in the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story?

Jason Scott Lee. No relation, and by his own account knowing little about martial arts, he took daily workouts from one of Bruce's old students to prepare for the part.

Which basketball star, a former student, fought Bruce Lee in the footage shot for Game of Death?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The 7 ft 2 in centre was a friend and student, and Lee was intrigued by the idea of filming a fight against a man who towered over him.

Enter the Dragon's climax has Bruce Lee hunting the villain Han through a room full of what?

Mirrors. Lee cannot tell the real Han from his reflections until he recalls his teacher's lesson and smashes the glass, leaving the villain nowhere to hide.

Bruce Lee died how long before Enter the Dragon's Hong Kong premiere?

Six days. He died on 20 July 1973, aged 32, and the film that opened on 26 July made him the worldwide star he had spent years trying to become.

Which Quentin Tarantino film dresses its heroine in a yellow tracksuit modelled on Bruce Lee's in Game of Death?

Kill Bill. Lee wore the suit in fight scenes he shot in 1972; he died before finishing the film, and it reached cinemas in 1978 padded out with doubles.

Which former James Bond actor was due to dine with Bruce Lee on the night Lee died?

George Lazenby. The two were to discuss a part for him in Lee's unfinished film; producer Raymond Chow went ahead to the restaurant, then returned to find Lee could not be woken.

Bruce Lee wrote the notes behind his book Tao of Jeet Kune Do while laid up for months in 1970 with what?

A back injury. He hurt himself lifting a barbell without warming up, and doctors said he would never practise martial arts again; within months he was training, though the pain never left him.

In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee shrugs off a rival's breaking stunt by saying that what 'don't hit back'?

Boards. It was Lee's standing answer to showy breaking displays, which he called 'just a stunt': the test of a fighter is an opponent who can strike back.

Which Chinese symbol sits at the centre of the emblem Bruce Lee designed for Jeet Kune Do?

The yin-yang. Lee ringed it with arrows to show the two forces constantly turning into each other, and with the motto 'Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation'.

Bruce Lee and Linda Emery married in 1964, three years before the US Supreme Court struck down state bans on what?

Interracial marriage. Linda's family, learning the couple meant to elope, called a tense meeting to talk them out of it, with the difference in race a main objection; they married days later anyway.

Bruce Lee's son Brandon died in 1993 on the set of which film?

The Crow. He was shot with a prop gun that had been wrongly loaded for the scene; he was 28, and was buried beside his father.

Which two Hollywood stars were among Bruce Lee's pallbearers?

Steve McQueen and James Coburn. Both had taken private lessons from Lee in Hollywood, and it was Coburn who spoke the eulogy at the grave, beginning 'Farewell, brother'.

Which relative of Bruce Lee executive-produced the 2019 TV series Warrior from his old pitch?

His daughter Shannon. She was four when he died; she later took charge of the company that manages his legacy, and Warrior grew from a treatment he wrote for a Western he never got to make.

The 1973 inquest blamed Bruce Lee's fatal brain swelling on what?

A painkiller. He had taken a tablet called Equagesic for a headache and never woke; later writers have blamed heat stroke or low blood sodium instead.

For the sake of his appearance on camera, Bruce Lee had what surgically removed?

Underarm sweat glands. Biographer Matthew Polly argues the operation left Lee less able to shed heat and that heat stroke killed him; a 2022 medical review doubted the glands alone could matter.

Which UFC figure called Bruce Lee the 'father of mixed martial arts'?

Dana White. The UFC's longtime president said Lee held that the perfect style was no style: take the good from every discipline, use what works and throw the rest away.

Which boxing champion of the 1980s said he perfected his jab by watching Bruce Lee?

Sugar Ray Leonard. He told Playboy in 1982 that one of the men who influenced him most 'wasn't a boxer' at all, the reverse of Lee's own habit of studying boxers on film.

In Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which actor's stuntman character fights Bruce Lee?

Brad Pitt. His stuntman Cliff Booth trades falls with a boastful Lee on the Green Hornet set, and the invented bout is broken up before either man wins.

Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong, but in which American city is he buried?

Seattle. His widow Linda chose the city where the two had met as students, and where she planned to live; his son Brandon was later buried beside him at Lake View Cemetery.

What was Bruce Lee doing when he first collapsed with brain swelling in May 1973?

Dubbing a film's dialogue. The studio's fans had been switched off to keep the soundtrack clean, and Lee fainted in the stifling heat, ten weeks before his death.

Time filed Bruce Lee beside Pelé and Che Guevara under which heading of its 100 people of the century?

Heroes & Icons. Time left the film star off its list of the century's artists and entertainers and profiled him in the same issue as Marilyn Monroe and Mother Teresa.

Where in Hong Kong does the city's bronze statue of Bruce Lee stand?

Avenue of Stars. Fans made it happen: the local Bruce Lee Club raised the money after its pleas to the government to honour him came to nothing, and it was unveiled on what would have been his 65th birthday.

Which divided Bosnian city put up a Bruce Lee statue in 2005 as a symbol of unity?

Mostar. A local youth group chose Lee as the one thing its Muslims, Serbs and Croats had in common; the bronze went up a day before Hong Kong's own statue.

Which Marvel martial artist, who debuted in 1973, is widely seen as a comic-book version of Bruce Lee?

Shang-Chi. He reached comics months after Lee's death in 1973, and Paul Gulacy, the artist who soon took over the strip, later said he had been trying to bring Bruce Lee back through him.

Which 1984 arcade game borrowed its five-storey tower from Bruce Lee's Game of Death?

Kung-Fu Master. Its fighter climbs a five-floor temple with a guardian on every level, as Lee's character climbs his pagoda; officially, though, it was sold in Japan as the tie-in to a different martial arts film.

Which French group credited Bruce Lee's philosophy with influencing their development of parkour?

The Yamakasi. The nine friends from the Paris suburbs drew on Lee's writings as teenagers, and a 2001 Luc Besson film named after them helped carry their sport around the world.