Bruce Lee
The Chinese-American martial artist and actor who put kung fu on the global screen, founded his own fighting philosophy, and died at thirty-two.
Origin
Lee Jun-fan (1940–1973) was born in San Francisco, raised in Hong Kong, and returned to the US as a teenager. He developed Jeet Kune Do — 'the way of the intercepting fist' — as a deliberately unstructured fighting style rejecting traditional forms. Hollywood would not give him lead roles, so he went back to Hong Kong, made Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon, and finally crossed over with Enter the Dragon (1973). He died of cerebral edema a month before its release.
Modern usage
'Be water, my friend' is the line — flexibility, adaptability, formlessness — that escaped martial-arts fandom and became a protest slogan (notably in Hong Kong, 2019). The yellow-and-black tracksuit (also reused by Tarantino's Kill Bill) is universally recognized. 'A Bruce Lee move' means decisive, fast, unconventional. He's the founder of every Asian-action archetype in Western film.
Tags