Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Net Worth 2025: Earnings & Career

Bruce Lee remains one of the most iconic martial artists and actors in cinematic history. Even decades after his passing, his legacy endures, influencing millions worldwide. This article explores Bruce Lee’s age, biography, physical stats, relationships, net worth and salary, career highlights, business, investments, social media presence, and education, with a focus on his financial impact and legacy in 2025.

Personal Profile About Bruce Lee

Age, Biography & Wiki

Occupation Martial Artist
Date of Birth 27 November 1940
Age 84 Years
Birth Place San Francisco, California, U.S.
Horoscope Sagittarius
Country Hong Kong
Date of death 20 July, 1973
Died Place Kowloon, Hong Kong

Height, Weight & Measurements

Lee dropped out of university in early 1964 and moved to Oakland to live with James Yimm Lee. James Lee was twenty years senior to Lee and a well-known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together, they founded the second Jun Fan martial arts studio in Oakland. James Lee was responsible for introducing Lee to Ed Parker, an American martial artist. At the invitation of Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships. He performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups, using the thumb and the index finger of one hand, with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart.

After filming one season of The Green Hornet, Lee found himself out of work and opened the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in Chinatown, Los Angeles. The controversial match with Wong Jack-man influenced Lee's philosophy about martial arts. Lee concluded that the fight had lasted too long and that he had failed to live up to his potential using his Wing Chun techniques. He took the view that traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalized to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. Lee decided to develop a system with an emphasis on "practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency". He started to use different methods of training such as weight training for strength, running for endurance, stretching for flexibility, and many others which he constantly adapted, including fencing and basic boxing techniques.

Although Lee opined that grappling was of little use in action choreography because it was not visually distinctive, he showcased grappling moves in his films, such as Way of the Dragon, where his character finishes his opponent Chuck Norris with a neck hold inspired by LeBell, and Enter the Dragon, whose prolog features Lee submitting his opponent Sammo Hung with an armbar. Game of Death also features Lee and Han-jae exchanging grappling moves, as well as Lee using wrestling against the character played by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

At 172 cm and weighing 64 kg, Lee was renowned for his physical fitness and vigor, achieved by using a dedicated fitness regimen to become as strong as possible. After his match with Wong Jack-man in 1965, Lee changed his approach toward martial arts training. Lee felt that many martial artists of his time did not spend enough time on physical conditioning. Lee included all elements of total fitness—muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility. He used traditional bodybuilding techniques to build some muscle mass, though not overdone, as that could decrease speed or flexibility. At the same time, concerning balance, Lee maintained that mental and spiritual preparation are fundamental to the success of physical training in martial arts skills. In Tao of Jeet Kune Do he wrote:

Bruce Lee films such as Game of Death and Enter the Dragon were the foundation for video game genres such as beat 'em up action games and fighting games. The first beat 'em up game, Kung-Fu Master (1984), was based on Lee's Game of Death. The Street Fighter video game franchise (1987 debut) was inspired by Enter the Dragon, with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style; Street Fighter went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. Since then, nearly every major fighting game franchise has had a character based on Bruce Lee. In April 2014, Lee was named a featured character in the combat sports video game EA Sports UFC, and is playable in multiple weight classes.

Height 170 cm
Weight 135 lbs
Body Measurements
Eye Color
Hair Color

Dating & Relationship Status

Born in San Francisco and raised in British Hong Kong, Lee was introduced to the Hong Kong film industry as a child actor by his father. His early martial arts experience included Wing Chun (trained under Ip Man), tai chi, boxing (winning a Hong Kong boxing tournament), and frequent street fighting (neighborhood and rooftop fights). In 1959, Lee moved to Seattle, where he enrolled at the University of Washington in 1961. It was during this time in the United States that he began considering making money by teaching martial arts, even though he aspired to have a career in acting. He opened his first martial arts school, operated out of his home in Seattle. After later adding a second school in Oakland, California, he once drew significant attention at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships of California by making demonstrations and speaking. He subsequently moved to Los Angeles to teach, where his students included Chuck Norris, Sharon Tate, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

His father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was a Cantonese opera singer based in Hong Kong. In December 1939, his parents traveled to California for an international opera tour in Chinatown, San Francisco. His birth in the U.S. allowed him to claim U.S. citizenship due to the United States' jus soli citizenship laws. When he was four months old (April 1941), the Lee family returned to Hong Kong. Soon after, the Lee family experienced unexpected hardships as Japan, amid World War II, launched a surprise attack on Hong Kong in December 1941 and ruled the city for the next four years.

The ethnicity of Bruce Lee's mother, Grace Ho, is contested. The consensus is that Grace Ho's father was a German immigrant, and that her mother was Chinese, as attested by biographers Robert Clouse and Bruce Thomas. Bruce Lee's wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, wrote that Bruce Lee's grandfather was a German Catholic.

A new alternative theory argues that Grace Ho's father was actually the son of a Dutch Jew, Charles Maurice Bosman, and his Chinese concubine. Charles Russo has questioned this origin story entirely, suggesting that Grace Ho's father might have been Chinese or mixed-Chinese, and that her mother might have been English. Matthew Polly concedes that Grace Ho's paternal grandfather was a Dutch Jew, but likewise asserts that her mother was English.

However, according to Doug Palmer, the claim that Grace Ho had an English mother is only speculation. Palmer also notes that family records suggest that the Dutch-Jewish Bosman family had originated from Germany, which may account for the assumption that Grace Ho was part German.

Lee's father was a Cantonese opera star. As a result, Junior Lee was introduced to the world of cinema at a very young age and appeared in several films as a child. Lee had his first role as a baby who was carried onto the stage in the film Golden Gate Girl. He took his Chinese stage name as 李小龍, lit.

At age seven, Lee began practicing tai chi together with his father. As a nine-year-old, he co-starred with his father in The Kid in 1950, which was based on a comic book character, "Kid Cheung", and was his first leading role. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in 20 films. After attending Tak Sun School (德信學校; several blocks from his home at 218 Nathan Road, Kowloon), Lee entered the primary school division of the Catholic La Salle College at age 12.

In the early 1950s, Lee's father became an opium addict. In 1956, due to poor academic performance (and possibly poor conduct), Lee was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College. He was mentored by Brother Edward Muss, F.M.S., a Bavarian-born teacher and coach of the school boxing team.

In 1953, Lee's friend William Cheung introduced him to Ip Man. According to Cheung, Lee's European background on his mother's side led him to be rejected, initially, from learning Wing Chun kung fu under Ip Man because of the long-standing rule in the Chinese martial arts world not to teach foreigners. Cheung spoke on his behalf and Lee was accepted into the school and began training in Wing Chun with Ip Man. Ip tried to keep his students from fighting in the street gangs of Hong Kong by encouraging them to fight in organized competitions.

In his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating the son of a feared triad family. In 1958, after students from a rival Choy Li Fut martial arts school challenged Lee's Wing Chun school, he engaged in a fight on a rooftop. In response to an unfair punch by another boy, he beat him so badly that one of his teeth was knocked out, leading to the boy's parents making a complaint to the police.

Lee's mother had to go to a police station and sign a document saying that she would take full responsibility for his actions if they released him into her custody. Though she did not mention the incident to her husband, she suggested that her son return to the United States to claim his U.S. citizenship at the age of 18. Lee's father agreed as Lee's college prospects were not very promising if he remained in Hong Kong.

"The police detective came and said, 'Excuse me, Mr. Lee, your son is really fighting bad in school. If he gets into just one more fight I might have to put him in jail'." In April 1959, Lee's parents decided to send him to the United States to stay with his older sister, Agnes Lee (李秋鳳), who was already living with family friends in San Francisco. After several months, he moved to Seattle in 1959 to continue his high school education, where he also worked for Ruby Chow as a live-in waiter at her restaurant. Chow's husband was a co-worker and friend of Lee's father. Lee's elder brother Peter Lee (李忠琛) joined him in Seattle for a short stay, before moving on to Minnesota to attend college.

In the same Long Beach event, he also performed the "one-inch punch". Lee stood upright, his right foot forward with knees bent slightly, in front of a standing, stationary partner. Lee's right arm was partly extended and his right fist was approximately 1 in away from the partner's chest. Without retracting his right arm, Lee then forcibly delivered the punch to volunteer Bob Baker while largely maintaining his posture. This sent Baker backward and falling into a chair placed behind Baker to prevent injury, though Baker's momentum caused him to fall to the floor. Baker recalled, "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable". It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met Taekwondo master Jhoongoo Rhee. The two developed a friendship— a relationship from which they benefited as martial artists. Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, and Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch.

Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, from whom he learned the fundamentals of Wu-style tai chi. In his teens, Lee became involved in Hong Kong gang conflicts, which led to frequent street fights. The largest influence on Lee's martial arts development was his study of Wing Chun. Lee was 16 years old under the Wing Chun teacher Ip Man, between late 1956 and 1957, after losing to rival gang members.

His poetic works were originally handwritten on paper, then later on edited and published, with John Little being the major author (editor), for Bruce Lee's works. Linda Lee Cadwell (Bruce Lee's wife) shared her husband's notes, poems, and experiences with followers. She mentioned, "Lee's poems are, by American standards, rather dark—reflecting the deeper, less exposed recesses of the human psyche".

Lee's Cantonese birth name was Lee Jun-fan (李振藩). The name homophonically means "return again", and was given to Lee by his mother, who felt he would return to the United States once he came of age. Because of his mother's superstitious nature, she had originally named him Sai-fon (細鳳), which is a feminine name meaning "small phoenix". The English name "Bruce" is thought to have been given by the hospital's attending physician, Dr. Mary Glover.

Lee's father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was one of the leading Cantonese opera and film actors at the time and was embarking on a year-long opera tour with his family on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Lee Hoi-chuen had been touring the United States for many years and performing in numerous Chinese communities there.

Lee's mother, Grace Ho, was from one of the wealthiest and most powerful clans in Hong Kong, the Ho-tungs. She was the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, the Eurasian patriarch of the clan. As such, the young Bruce Lee grew up in an affluent and privileged environment. Despite the advantage of his family's status, the neighborhood in which Lee grew up became overcrowded, dangerous, and full of gang rivalries due to an influx of refugees fleeing communist China for Hong Kong, at that time a British Crown Colony.

Grace's parentage remains unclear. Linda Lee, in her 1989 biography The Bruce Lee Story, suggests that Grace had a German father and was a Catholic. Bruce Thomas, in his 1994 biography Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit, suggests that Grace had a Chinese mother and a German father. Eric Peter Ho said that Grace Lee was the daughter of a mixed-race Shanghainese woman and her father was Ho Kom Tong. Grace Lee herself reported that her mother was English and her father was Chinese. Fredda Dudley Balling said Grace Lee was three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter British.

In the 2018 biography Bruce Lee: A Life, Matthew Polly identifies Lee's maternal grandfather as Ho Kom-tong, who had often been reported as his adoptive grandfather. Ho Kom-tong's father, Charles Maurice Bosman, was a Dutch Jewish businessman from Rotterdam. He moved to Hong Kong with the Dutch East India Company and served as the Dutch consul to Hong Kong at one time. He had a Chinese concubine named Sze Tai with whom he had six children, including Ho Kom Tong. Bosman subsequently abandoned his family and immigrated to California. Ho Kom Tong became a wealthy businessman with a wife, 13 concubines, and a British mistress who gave birth to Grace Ho.

While studying at the University of Washington he met his future wife Linda Emery, a fellow student studying to become a teacher. As relations between people of different races were still banned in many US states, they married in secret in August 1964. Lee had two children with Linda: Brandon (1965–1993) and Shannon Lee (born 1969). Upon's Lee passing in 1973, she continued to promote Bruce Lee's martial art Jeet Kune Do. She wrote the 1975 book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, on which the 1993 feature film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was based. In 1989, she wrote the book The Bruce Lee Story. She retired in 2001 from the family estate.

Lee died when his daughter Shannon was four. In her youth she studied Jeet Kune Do under Richard Bustillo, one of her father's students; however, her serious studies did not begin until the late 1990s. To train for parts in action movies, she studied Jeet Kune Do with Ted Wong.

Lee's brother Robert with his friends Taky Kimura, Dan Inosanto, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Peter Chin were his pallbearers. Coburn was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Coburn worked with Lee and Stirling Silliphant on developing The Silent Flute. Upon Lee's early death, at his funeral, Coburn gave a eulogy. Regarding McQueen, Lee made no secret that he wanted everything McQueen had and would stop at nothing to get it. Inosanto and Kimura were friends and disciples of Lee. Inosanto would go on to train Lee's son Brandon. Kimura continued to teach Lee's craft in Seattle. According to Lee's wife, Chin was a lifelong family friend and a student of Lee.

On July 20, 1973, Lee was in Hong Kong to have dinner with actor George Lazenby, with whom he intended to make a film. According to Lee's wife Linda, Lee met producer Raymond Chow at 2 p.m. at home to discuss the making of the film Game of Death. They worked until 4 p.m. and then drove together to the home of Lee's colleague Betty Ting, a Taiwanese actress. The three went over the script at Ting's home, and then Chow left to attend a dinner meeting.

In 2004, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) founder Dana White called Lee the "father of mixed martial arts" and stated: "If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away".

Parents
Husband Linda Emery (m. August 17, 1964)
Sibling
Children

Net Worth & Salary

Underworld pay tribute to Bruce Lee in their song Bruce Lee from their 1999 album Beaucoup Fish, a blend of rock, techno, and guitar riffs. According to DAFT FM, the lyrics can be interpreted as encouraging the idea of self-actualization and individuals to be true to themselves, thus paying tribute to Lee's philosophy of empowering oneself and living life to the fullest.

Career, Business & Investments

Bruce Lee (born Lee Jun-fan; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong-American martial artist, actor, filmmaker, and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy which was formed from Lee's experiences in unarmed fighting and self-defense—as well as eclectic, Zen Buddhist and Taoist philosophies—as a new school of martial arts thought. With a film career spanning Hong Kong and the United States, Lee is regarded as the first global Chinese film star and one of the most influential martial artists in the history of cinema. Known for his roles in five feature-length martial arts films, Lee is credited with helping to popularize martial arts films in the 1970s and promoting Hong Kong action cinema.

Lee's career was cut short by his sudden death at age 32 from a brain edema, the causes of which remain a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, his films remained popular, gained a large cult following, and became widely imitated and exploited. He became an iconic figure known throughout the world, particularly among the Chinese, based upon his portrayal of Cantonese culture in his films, and among Asian Americans for defying Asian stereotypes in the United States. Since his death, Lee has continued to be a prominent influence on modern combat sports, including judo, karate, mixed martial arts, and boxing, as well as modern popular culture, including film, television, comics, animation, and video games. Time named Lee one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.

Lee had abandoned thoughts of a film career in favor of pursuing martial arts. However, a martial arts exhibition in Long Beach in 1964 eventually led to the invitation by television producer William Dozier for an audition for a role in the pilot for "Number One Son" about Lee Chan, the son of Charlie Chan. The show never materialized, but Dozier saw potential in Lee.

During the show's production, Lee became friends with Gene LeBell, who worked as a stuntman in the show. The two trained together and exchanged martial arts knowledge from their respective specialties. After the show was canceled in 1967, Lee wrote to Dozier thanking him for starting "my career in show business".

At the time, two of Lee's martial arts students were Hollywood script writer Stirling Silliphant and actor James Coburn. In 1969, the three worked on a script for a film titled The Silent Flute, and they went together on a location hunt to India. The project was not realized at the time, but the 1978 film Circle of Iron, starring David Carradine, was based on the same plot. In 2010, producer Paul Maslansky was reported to have planned and received funding for a film based on the original script for The Silent Flute.

The role of the Shaolin monk in the Kung Fu was eventually awarded to then-non-martial artist David Carradine. In an interview with The Pierre Berton Show, Lee stated he understood Warner Bros.' attitudes towards casting in the series: "They think that business-wise it is a risk. I don't blame them. If the situation were reversed, and an American star were to come to Hong Kong, and I was the man with the money, I would have my own concerns as to whether the acceptance would be there".

Lee played his first leading role in The Big Boss (1971), which proved to be an enormous box-office success across Asia and catapulted him to instant stardom in Hong Kong. He followed up with Fist of Fury (1972), which broke the box office records set previously by The Big Boss, with film critic Blake Howard writing that Lee was "cresting the wave of international super-stardom." Having finished his initial two-year contract, Lee negotiated a new deal with Golden Harvest. Lee later formed his own company, Concord Production Inc., with Chow. For his third film, The Way of the Dragon (1972), he was given complete control of the film's production as the writer, director, star, and choreographer of the fight scenes. In 1964, at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, Lee met karate champion Chuck Norris. In The Way of the Dragon Lee introduced Norris to moviegoers as his opponent. Their showdown has been characterized as "one of the best fight scenes in martial arts and film history". Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon grossed an estimated US$100 million and US$130 million worldwide, respectively.

One month into the filming, another production company, Starseas Motion Pictures, promoted Lee as a leading actor in Fist of Unicorn, although he had merely agreed to choreograph the fight sequences in the film as a favor to his long-time friend Unicorn Chan. Lee planned to sue the production company but retained his friendship with Chan. However, only a few months after the completion of Enter the Dragon, and six days before its July 26, 1973, release, Lee died.

In 1972, after the success of The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, a third film was planned by Raymond Chow at Golden Harvest to be directed by Lo Wei, titled Yellow-Faced Tiger. However, at the time, Lee decided to direct and produce his script for Way of the Dragon instead. Although Lee had formed a production company with Raymond Chow, a period film was also planned from September–November 1973 with the competing Shaw Brothers Studio, to be directed by either Chor Yuen or Cheng Kang, and written by Yi Kang and Chang Cheh, titled The Seven Sons of the Jade Dragon.

Although many of his peers decided to stay in the US, Lee Hoi-chuen returned to Hong Kong after Bruce's birth. Within months, Hong Kong was invaded and the Lees lived for three years and eight months under Japanese occupation. After the war ended, Lee Hoi-chuen resumed his acting career and became a more popular actor during Hong Kong's rebuilding years.

In North America, his films initially played largely to black, Asian and Hispanic audiences. Within black communities, Lee's popularity was second only to heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali in the 1970s. As Lee broke through to the mainstream, he became a rare non-white movie star in a Hollywood industry dominated by white actors at the time. According to rapper LL Cool J, Lee's films were the first time many non-white American children such as himself had seen a non-white action hero on the big screen in the 1970s.

Bruce Lee influenced several comic book writers, notably Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee, who considered Bruce Lee to be a superhero without a costume. Shortly after his death, Lee inspired the Marvel characters Shang-Chi (debuted 1973) and Iron Fist (debuted 1974) as well as the comic book series The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (debuted 1974). According to Stan Lee, any character that has been a martial artist since then owes their origin to Bruce Lee in some form.

Social Network

Most of Bruce Lee's poems are categorized as anti-poetry or fall into a paradox. The mood in his poems shows the side of the man that can be compared with other poets such as Robert Frost, one of many well-known poets expressing himself with dark poetic works. The paradox taken from the Yin and Yang symbol in martial arts was also integrated into his poetry. His martial arts and philosophy contribute a great part to his poetry. The free verse form of Lee's poetry reflects his quote "Be formless ... shapeless, like water."

Enter the Dragon has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. Sascha Matuszak of Vice said Enter the Dragon "is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts." Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited fight scenes in Lee's films such as Enter the Dragon as being influential for the way they pitched "an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way".

Though Bruce Lee did not appear in commercials during his lifetime, his likeness and image has since appeared in hundreds of commercials around the world. Nokia launched an Internet-based campaign in 2008 with staged "documentary-looking" footage of Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with his nunchaku and also igniting matches as they are thrown toward him. The videos went viral on YouTube, creating confusion as some people believed them to be authentic footage.

A theme park dedicated to Lee was built in Jun'an, Guangdong. Mainland Chinese only started watching Bruce Lee films in the 1980s, when videos of classic movies like Fist of Fury became available.

On January 6, 2009, it was announced that Lee's Hong Kong home (41 Cumberland Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong) would be preserved and transformed into a tourist site by Yu Pang-lin. Yu died in 2015 and this plan did not materialize. In 2018, Yu's grandson, Pang Chi-ping, said: "We will convert the mansion into a centre for Chinese studies next year, which provides courses like Mandarin and Chinese music for children."

Education

In 1959, Lee started to teach martial arts. He called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu (literally Bruce Lee's Kung Fu). It was his approach to Wing Chun. Lee taught friends he met in Seattle, starting with Judo practitioner Jesse Glover, who continued to teach some of Lee's early techniques. Lee's early student group was the most racially diverse group of practitioners of Chinese martial arts until that time. During this time period, Lee invented his one-inch punch. He also became interested in boxing and the techniques of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson.

Taky Kimura became Lee's first Assistant Instructor and continued to teach his art and philosophy after Lee's death. Lee opened his first martial arts school, named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle.

In March 1961, Lee enrolled at the University of Washington. Despite what Lee himself and many others have stated, Lee's official major was drama rather than philosophy, according to a 1999 article in the university's alumni publication. In his junior year, he took two classes in psychology and two classes in philosophy; both of these became core interests for him for the rest of his life. He socialized with wealthy young people, but lived in relative poverty and worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant.

In 1964, Lee had a controversial private match with Wong Jack-man. Jack Man was a direct student of Ma Kin Fung, known for his mastery of Xingyiquan, Northern Shaolin, and tai chi. According to Lee, the Chinese community issued an ultimatum to him to stop teaching non-Chinese people. When he refused to comply, he was challenged to a combat match with Wong. The arrangement was that if Lee lost, he would have to shut down his school, while if he won, he would be free to teach white people, or anyone else. Wong denied this, stating that he requested to fight Lee after Lee boasted during one of his demonstrations at a Chinatown theater that he could beat anyone in San Francisco, and that Wong himself did not discriminate against whites or other non-Chinese people. Lee commented, "That paper had all the names of the sifu from Chinatown, but they don't scare me". Individuals known to have witnessed the match include Cadwell, James Lee (Bruce Lee's associate, no relation), and William Chen, a teacher of tai chi.

From August to October 1972, Lee began work on his fourth Golden Harvest film, Game of Death. He began filming some scenes, including his fight sequence with 7 ft American basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former student. Production stopped in November 1972 when Warner Bros. offered Lee the opportunity to star in Enter the Dragon, the first film to be produced jointly by Concord, Golden Harvest, and Warner Bros. Filming began in Hong Kong in February 1973 and was completed in April 1973.

Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon, together with Golden Harvest, revived Lee's unfinished film Game of Death. Lee had shot over 100 minutes of footage, including outtakes, for Game of Death before shooting was stopped to allow him to work on Enter the Dragon. In addition to Abdul-Jabbar, George Lazenby, Hapkido master Ji Han-jae, and another of Lee's students, Dan Inosanto, appeared in the film, which culminated in Lee's character, Hai Tien, clad in a yellow tracksuit taking on a series of different challengers on each floor as they make their way through a five-level pagoda.

Lee was trained in boxing, between 1956 and 1958, by Brother Edward, coach of the St. Francis Xavier's College boxing team. Lee went on to win the Hong Kong Schools boxing tournament in 1958 while scoring knockdowns against the previous champion Gary Elms in the final. After moving to the United States, Lee was heavily influenced by heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, whose footwork he studied and incorporated into his style in the 1960s.

It was at the 1964 championships that Lee first met taekwondo master Jhoongoo Rhee. While Rhee taught Lee the side kick in detail, Lee taught Rhee the "non-telegraphic" punch. Rhee learned what he calls the "accupunch" from Lee and incorporated it into American taekwondo. The "accupunch" is a rapid fast punch that is very difficult to block, based on human reaction time—"the idea is to finish the execution of the punch before the opponent can complete the brain-to-wrist communication."

Lee favored cross-training between different fighting styles, and had a particular interest in grappling. Lee trained with several judo practitioners in Seattle and California, among them Fred Sato, Jesse Glover, Taky Kimura, Hayward Nishioka, and Wally Jay, as well as Gene LeBell. Many of his first students were proficient in judo and other arts, and he learned as much as he taught. After befriending LeBell on the set of The Green Hornet, Lee offered to teach him striking arts in exchange for being taught grappling techniques. LeBell had been taught catch wrestling by prestigious grapplers Lou Thesz and Ed Lewis, and notable techniques of both judo and catch wrestling can be seen in Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do. He also learned grappling moves from hapkido master Ji Han-jae.

While best known as a martial artist, Lee studied drama and Asian and Western philosophy, starting while a student at the University of Washington. He was well-read and had an extensive library dominated by martial arts subjects and philosophical texts. His books on martial arts and fighting philosophy are known for their philosophical assertions, both inside and outside of martial arts circles. His eclectic philosophy often mirrored his fighting beliefs, though he was quick to say that his martial arts were solely a metaphor for such teachings.

Lee had three other Chinese names: Lee Yuen-cham (李源鑫), a family/clan name; Lee Yuen-kam (李元鑒), which he used as a student name while he was attending La Salle College, and his Chinese screen name Lee Siu-lung (李小龍; Siu-lung means "little dragon"). Lee's given name Jun-fan was originally written in Chinese as 震藩; however, the Jun (震) Chinese character was identical to part of his grandfather's name, Lee Jun-biu (李震彪). Hence, the Chinese character for Jun in Lee's name was changed to the homonym 振 instead, to avoid naming taboo in Chinese tradition.

Lee died when his son Brandon was eight years old. While alive, Lee taught Brandon martial arts and would invite him to visit sets. This gave Brandon the desire to act and he went on to study the craft. As a young adult, Brandon Lee found some success acting in action-oriented pictures such as Legacy of Rage (1986), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), and Rapid Fire (1992). In 1993, at the age of 28, Brandon Lee died after being accidentally shot by a prop gun on the set of The Crow.

Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant was a martial arts student and a friend of Lee. Silliphant worked with Lee and James Coburn on developing The Silent Flute. Lee acted and provided his martial arts expertise in several projects penned by Silliphant, the first in Marlowe (1969) where Lee plays Winslow Wong a hoodlum well-versed in martial arts. Lee also did fight choreographies for the film A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970) and played Li Tsung, a Jeet Kune Do instructor who teaches the main character in the television show Longstreet (1971). Elements of his martial arts philosophy were included in the script for the latter.

Lee is credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films. He defied Asian stereotypes, such as the emasculated Asian male stereotype. His friend Amy Sanbo recalls that, "In a time when so many Asians were trying to convince themselves they were white, Bruce was so proud to be Chinese he was busting with it. In contrast to earlier stereotypes which depicted Asian men as emasculated, childlike, coolies, or domestic servants, Lee demonstrated that Asian men could be "tough, strong and sexy" according to University of Michigan lecturer Hye Seung Chung. In turn, Lee's popularity inspired a new Asian stereotype, the martial artist.

Summary Table: Bruce Lee’s Financial Legacy

Metric 1973 (Death) Hypothetical 2025
Net Worth $10 million $75 million
Annual Earnings N/A $3 million+
Main Source of Income Film, TV Royalties, Brand

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