Bruce Lee was born in the hour of the dragon, between 6-8 a.m., in the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac calendar, November 27, 1940 at the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the United States.Bruce was the third child of his parents Lee Hou-Cheun and his mother Gracie Lee. The city of his birth was somewhat accidental due to the fact that his father Lee Hoi Chuen was a minor star of the Cantonese Opera Company, who were touring the area at that time. At birth, he was given the name Lee Jun Fan (which means "Return Again") by his parents. According to legend, his parents chose the name because they had a strange feeling that some day their son would return to the USA.Shortly before leaving the Jackson Street hospital, a nurse suggested that it might be a good idea to give the child an English Christian name to avoid any complications with his American birth certificate. The nurse suggested the name Bruce Lee, and the newborn's parents agreed. In 1941, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Bruce Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. He also studied dance, once winning a cha-cha competition. As a teenager, he became a member of a Hong Kong street gang, where he lost a in a street fight and in 1953 he began studying kung fu to sharpen his fighting skills. In 1959, after Lee got into trouble with the police for fighting, his mother sent him back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington.
Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery, whom he married in 1964. By that time, Lee had opened his own martial arts school in Seattle. He and Linda soon moved to California, where Lee opened two more schools in Los Angeles and Oakland. At his schools, Lee taught mostly a style he called Jeet Kune Do.Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired from 1966 to 1967. In the show, which was based on a 1930s radio program, the small, wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornet’s loyal sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while his most notable role came in the 1969 film Marlowe, starring James Garner. Confronted with the dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding actors of Asian heritage, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in 1971, with his wife and two children (Brandon, born in 1965, and Shannon, born in 1967.
Back in the city where he had grown up, Lee signed a two-film contract. Fists of Fury (its U.S. title) was released in late 1971, featuring Lee as a vengeful fighter chasing the villains who had killed his kung-fu master. 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.
Bruce Lee was born in the hour of the dragon, between 6-8 a.m., in the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac calendar, November 27, 1940 at the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the United States.Bruce was the third child of his parents Lee Hou-Cheun and his mother Gracie Lee. The city of his birth was somewhat accidental due to the fact that his father Lee Hoi Chuen was a minor star of the Cantonese Opera Company, who were touring the area at that time. At birth, he was given the name Lee Jun Fan (which means "Return Again") by his parents. According to legend, his parents chose the name because they had a strange feeling that some day their son would return to the USA.Shortly before leaving the Jackson Street hospital, a nurse suggested that it might be a good idea to give the child an English Christian name to avoid any complications with his American birth certificate. The nurse suggested the name Bruce Lee, and the newborn's parents agreed. In 1941, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Bruce Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. He also studied dance, once winning a cha-cha competition. As a teenager, he became a member of a Hong Kong street gang, where he lost a in a street fight and in 1953 he began studying kung fu to sharpen his fighting skills. In 1959, after Lee got into trouble with the police for fighting, his mother sent him back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington.
Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery, whom he married in 1964. By that time, Lee had opened his own martial arts school in Seattle. He and Linda soon moved to California, where Lee opened two more schools in Los Angeles and Oakland. At his schools, Lee taught mostly a style he called Jeet Kune Do.Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired from 1966 to 1967. In the show, which was based on a 1930s radio program, the small, wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornet’s loyal sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while his most notable role came in the 1969 film Marlowe, starring James Garner. Confronted with the dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding actors of Asian heritage, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in 1971, with his wife and two children (Brandon, born in 1965, and Shannon, born in 1967.