Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington.

to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington, initially taking up work as a dance instructor. By the end of the decade, Lee moved back to the U.S. In 1953, he began to hone his passions into a discipline, studying kung fu (referred to as 'gung fu' in Cantonese) under the tutelage of Master Yip Man. He also studied dance, winning Hong Kong's cha-cha competition, and would become known for his poetry as well.Īs a teenager, he was taunted by British students for his Chinese background and later joined a street gang. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. In the early 1940s, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. The future star appeared in his first film at the age of 3 months, when he served as the stand-in for an American baby in Golden Gate Girl (1941). Lee received the name 'Bruce' from a nurse at his birthing hospital, and his family never used the name during his preschool years. His father, Lee Hoi Chuen, a Hong Kong opera singer, moved with his wife, Grace Ho, and three children to the United States in 1939 Hoi Chuen's fourth child, a son, was born while he was on tour in San Francisco. Lee was born Lee Jun Fan on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California, in both the hour and year of the Dragon.

Shortly before the release of his film Enter the Dragon, he died at the age of 32 on July 20, 1973. He starred in the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-67) and became a major box office draw in The Chinese Connection and Fists of Fury.

Iconic actor, director and martial arts expert Bruce Lee was a child actor in Hong Kong who later returned to the U.S.

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