Bruce Lee Trivia
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59 free Bruce Lee trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Bruce Lee trivia quiz covers a life that lasted only 32 years and changed cinema and combat sports for good. It begins in San Francisco's Chinatown, where he was born during his father's opera tour, then moves to Hong Kong: the child-actor roles, Ip Man's Wing Chun school, the rooftop fights, the schools boxing title and the cha-cha championship he won the same year. From there it follows him to Seattle, the University of Washington, the first Jun Fan Gung Fu school, the one-inch punch at Long Beach and the private fight with Wong Jack-man that changed his thinking. The second half is about Kato and The Green Hornet, the students who included Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Sharon Tate and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the birth of Jeet Kune Do, the Kung Fu television dispute, and the five films: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon and the unfinished Game of Death. It ends with the collapse in May 1973, the death in Betty Ting's flat, the coroner's verdict and the theories that have followed, plus his legacy in MMA and beyond. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Jackie Chan and Martial Arts quizzes next.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee was born in which American city?
San Francisco
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.
Q 02Bruce Lee's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was a star of what?
Cantonese opera
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.
Q 03Bruce Lee's Chinese screen name, Lee Siu-lung, makes him which kind of dragon?
Little
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.
Q 04In his widow's telling, Bruce Lee's mother named her American-born son Jun-fan because it meant what?
Return again
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'.
Q 05Bruce Lee famously urged people to empty the mind and be formless and shapeless, like what?
Water
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.
Q 06Which weapon did Bruce Lee turn into a worldwide craze by whirling it in his 1970s films?
Nunchaku
Nunchaku. The craze worried the authorities: British film censors cut nunchaku scenes for years, and several US states banned owning the weapon.
Q 07Before Wing Chun, which martial art did the young Bruce Lee learn from his father?
Tai chi
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'.
Q 08Which Wing Chun grandmaster taught the teenage Bruce Lee in Hong Kong?
Ip Man
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.
Q 09What did Bruce Lee's Wing Chun classmates cite when they pressed their teacher to drop him?
His mixed ancestry
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.
Q 10Besides a schools boxing title, what else did Bruce Lee win in Hong Kong in 1958?
The Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship
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.
Q 11Why did Bruce Lee's parents send him from Hong Kong to America at 18?
Trouble with the police
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.
Q 12Which future Hong Kong superstar had bit parts as a teenager in Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon?
Jackie Chan
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.
Q 13Which heavyweight champion did Bruce Lee study on film, working the boxer's moves into his own fighting style?
Muhammad Ali
Q 21Bruce Lee played the sidekick in The Green Hornet, but who played the title character?
Van Williams
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.
Q 22Bruce Lee's Green Hornet sidekick also appeared in which series?
Batman
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.
Q 23What problem did Bruce Lee's fight scenes cause the camera crew on The Green Hornet?
He moved too fast
He moved too fast. On film his kicks and punches barely registered, so the camera operators had to ask him to slow down.
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.
Q 14Bruce Lee said philosophy, but which major does the University of Washington's alumni magazine list for him?
Drama
Drama. He took philosophy and psychology classes there from 1961, then left in 1964 without a degree to teach martial arts full time.
Q 15In which city did Bruce Lee open his second martial arts school in 1964, with James Yimm Lee?
Oakland
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.
Q 16At a 1964 karate tournament in Long Beach, what did Bruce Lee do on just two fingers of one hand?
Push-ups
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.
Q 17Which signature strike did Bruce Lee demonstrate at the 1964 Long Beach karate championships, knocking a man backward?
The one-inch punch
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.
Q 18Bruce Lee's breakthrough 1964 demonstration came at a tournament run by Ed Parker, karate teacher to which singer?
Elvis Presley
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.
Q 19Bruce Lee's controversial 1964 private match was against which martial artist?
Wong Jack-man
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.
Q 20Producer William Dozier first auditioned Bruce Lee for a pilot about the son of which fictional detective?
Charlie Chan
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.
Q 24Which judoka and stuntman befriended Bruce Lee on The Green Hornet and swapped grappling for striking lessons?
Gene LeBell
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.
Q 25Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do translates as what?
Way of the intercepting fist
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'.
Q 26Which screenwriter, a Bruce Lee student, wrote him into Marlowe and Longstreet?
Stirling Silliphant
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.
Q 27In Marlowe (1969), how does Bruce Lee's hired heavy try to scare the detective?
Trashes his office
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.
Q 28Which actress did Bruce Lee coach for her fight against Nancy Kwan in The Wrecking Crew?
Sharon Tate
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.
Q 29Bruce Lee's widow said a Hollywood studio reworked his pitch for a series called The Warrior into which show?
Kung Fu
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.
Q 30Back in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee found The Green Hornet had been airing there under what name?
The Kato Show
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.