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TIME, APRIL 12, 1993
"Bird of ill omen. (death of actor Brandon Lee)"


ACTOR BRANDON LEE HAD HOPED TO RIDE THE CROW, his third significant Hollywood film, to stardom. Instead it was a bird of ill omen. A storm destroyed sets; a carpenter was nearly electrocuted. Then during Wednesday's filming, a gun that should have shot bl anks apparently fired something that passed through Lee's abdomen and lodged next to his spine, killing him. "I don't know how it got in [the gun]," said The Crow's executive producer of the projectile, later identified as a .44-cal. bullet.

Lee, 28, who was to be married in April, was the son of martial-arts cult hero Bruce Lee, many of whose fans smelled mystery in his own sudden death from brain swelling in 1973. There may be solid ground for speculation in his son's demise.

People Weekly, September 7, 1992 (Michael Lipton and John Griffith)
"Son of Bruce Breaks Loose"


Fiesty Brandon Lee takes on Hollywood with his own martial (arts) plan. Roaring down Muholland drive at 75 m.p.h., hunched over the tank of his motorcycle, Brandon Lee, 27, is definitely showing off. At one point, the son of the late, legendary martial-arts film star Bruce Lee cockily lets go of the Harley's handlebars and extends his arms to all Los Angeles. Lee's girlfriend of two years, Lisa Hutton, 28, a story editor for Billwater, Kiefer Sutherland's production company, stands beside the road unfazed. "I must think he's invincible too," she says, sighing. Lee pulls up beside her and hastily jams a fragile-looking helmet over his long black hair, just in case a cop comes by. "This goddamn helmet law!" he rants. "If I want to put my head in a brick wall, it's my business."

Lee's principal business these days is following the high-flying footsteps of his famous father, whose balletic acrobatics in chop-socky classics like the 1973 Enter the Dragon made him an international star. The son also rises (or hopes to) in the current Rapid Fire, his first solo U.S. starring vehicle, in which, as a college student battling gangsters, Lee (like his dad) choreographed most of his own fight scenes. Comparing Brandon with Bruce, producer Robert Lawrence observes, "His father had a burning intensity onscreen; Brandon's more fun. He's free-wheeling, hip, and tongue-in-cheek."

Offscreen, Lee's humor isn't always apparent. "When I first met him, I thought he was arrogant," says Hutton, with whom Lee shares a rented two-bedroom chalet-style house in Beverly Hills. "But he's not. He's confident, intense and direct, and a lot of people find that intimidating."

Including, no doubt, the burglar who broke into Lee's pad two years ago, confronting him with a kitchen knife. "You want to put that thing down," intoned the lean (6', 160-lb.), mean Lee, who, at age 2, was taught the martial art of Jeet Kune Do by his father. The intruder lunged anyway, s lashing Lee on his left arm, but receiving, in turn a separated shoulder and a broken arm. Actually, Lee would rather take than fight. Says his actor pal Miguel (Twin Peaks) Ferrero, son of Jose: "We'll sit around drinking, listening to Jackson Browne, solving the problems of the world until the sun comes up." One early topic of their bull sessions was Brandon's father. In 1973, Bruce Lee died without warning at age 32, from an edema (swelling) in his brain. Lee had been shooting a movie in his native Hong Kong, accompanied bye his American-born wife, Linda, daugher Shannon, 3, and Brandon, then 8. Shannon, now a singer who lives in New Orleans, says Brandon "was gravely affected" by their dad's death. "But he has definitely come to terms with it."

The process was long and painful, though. "Like everyone, I was real respectful toward my dad," says Brandon. "He was quite the hero." But his sudden death triggered rumors of drug abuse, foul play, even voodoo, garishly served up in the tabloids. Not until he was a teen did Brandon realize the storied were "right about the same level as Elvis sightings at McDonald's." By then he also came to appreciate that his diminuitive father (5'7", 130-lbs.) wasn't superhuman but "just a guy". One of our biggest regrets, says Brandon, is "that I never got to spar with my dad after I was bigger than him".

He got into plenty of scrapes, however, with kids his own age after his mother moved the family first to Seattle, then to posh Rolling Hills, California, where Brandon was constantly challenged to prove himself as Bruce Lee's son. And, he says, "I always had a pretty good knack for raising hell". Indeed, he got kicked out of two high schools for insubordination and quit the third one in his senior year. But his father's profession beckoned. He took drama classes at Boston's Emerson College (where Jay Leno studied) and won roles off Broadway.In 1985, at 20, Lee went to Hollywood. Though the family name opened no doors and he wound up as a script reader, casting agent Lynn Stalmaster finally got him his TV debut in the short-lived Kung Fu: The Next Generation.

To leap onto the big screen, Brandon, like his father, had to go back to Hong Kong, where he starred in a Cantonese martial-arts film and later teamed with Dolph Lundgren in 1991's Showdown in Little Tokyo. Negotiating his next movie, The Crow, about a rock star back from the dead, Lee is living as fast as he can. A night owl ("I really kick into gear at 2 or 3 in the morning"), he jumps rope and bikes daily and trains at the martial-arts gym three times a week. "My dad said time was the most valuable thing a person had," he recalls. "That really struck me. I've made a conscious effort not to waste it."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 13, 1992 (William Arnold)
"The Lee way tough act to follow despite kung fu roles, Bruce Lee's son says he's different"


When kung fu superstar Bruce Lee died unexpectedly in 1973 at age 33, it was the beginning of a death-cult phenomenon rivaling those of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Elvis Presley.

His legend has steadily grown, especially in Asia, where his life and mysterious death have become a small industry, celebrated in a barrage of novels, comic books, television programs, video games and movies.

On this side of the Pacific, what is being widely touted as the latest manifestation of this phenomenon is the emergence of Lee's 27-year-old son, Brandon. His first major Hollywood film, a kung fu action piece called "Rapid Fire," opens Aug. 21.

But anyone expecting this Son of Bruce to be a rip-off or a clone is due for a big surprise. The BRANDON LEE who returned to Seattle recently to promote "Rapid Fire" is taller (by 5 inches), a better-trained actor and probably even a better martial artist than his famous father.

It is also clear two minutes into a conversation with him that he has no intention of trying to follow in his father's foot kicks.

"I think what my father did for the movies was great, but I basically take acting more seriously than he did. If there is a career I'd like to emulate, it would probably be someone like Mel Gibson, who broke in with action movies and still does action movies, but also does 'Hamlet."

Lee said he was born in Oakland, but his first memories are of the eight years his family lived in Hong Kong, where his father - who had lived in Seattle for many years and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in philosophy - had returned, and was establishing himself as an international superstar in a series of Hollywood-financed chop-socky films like "Fist of Fury" and "Enter the Dragon."

Brandon was 8 when his father died in the Hong Kong apartment of his leading lady, under circumstances that have given life to much speculation and rumor over the years. His body was brought back to Seattle for burial and the funeral became a media event, attended by stars like Steve McQueen and James Coburn. (Brandon is seen as a teary-eyed little boy in newspaper photos of the time.)

His upbringing after the funeral was as hectic as it had been before. "My mother, sister and I moved around a lot in those years. I still don't exactly have it straight. There were a couple of years in Calgary with my mother's family, and then we were back in Seattle for a year or so. Everett, I think. Then we finally moved down to L.A., where I went to high school."

Actually, he went to three high schools and was expelled from all three. "I guess you could say I had a rebellious streak. At the last one - a private school - I was the student-body president, and the day John Lennon was shot I called everyone in the senior class and - without any authorization, I admit - took it upon myself to cancel classes for the next day."

After he finally made it through high school, he settled down considerably at Emerson College in Massachusetts, where he majored in theater. "It's funny, but all my life I've known I wanted to be an actor. I've never had the slightest doubt or even considered a fall-back profession. And the ambition has never been for movie stardom, particularly. I'm much more comfortable playing character parts on the stage."

Since graduating seven years ago, Lee has more or less been paying his dues as a working actor. He has appeared in several Equity productions in New York, made his television debut in "Kung Fu: The Movie" in 1986, and he had co-starring roles in a Hong Kong kung fu movie called "Legacy of Rage" and a Hollywood film called "Showdown in Little Tokyo."

Lee said he has taken the ancient Chinese method of self-defense very seriously since his father started training him as a toddler, and his prowess in the two films was impressive. So impressive that Hollywood has been expecting him to emerge as an action-movie star since the late 1980s.

But he has approached the job offers "very cautiously." He said Universal offered him the plum lead role in the Bruce Lee BIOGRAPHY it is shooting, but he turned it down. "Maybe if I were more established I would have taken the part. But as it is, it seemed too risky, both psychologically and professionally."

Instead, he chose "Rapid Fire," a hard-driving, martial-arts movie in which he plays a cynical young Eurasian who runs afoul of both the Asian and Italian underworlds in contemporary Chicago. "I basically like the movie. It's not great art by any means, but it's not mean-spirited, and it's exciting. It does its job well." He also thinks the film is a good showcase for him as an actor and as a personality distinct from his father.

He is also set to play the lead in "The Crow" ("if the final deal can be made"), in which he will play a rock star obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe. But before that, he will return to the rented house in the Hollywood Hills he shares with his girlfriend, come down from a public-appearance tour all over the United States and Asia, and see what kind of reception "Rapid Fire" has when it opens Aug. 21.

Lee said the Asian leg of his promotion tour did not represent a happy homecoming for him ("the Hong Kong press are just vultures!"). He speaks Cantonese ("well enough to get along") but he feels no particular affinity for Asia and does not want to live there. "The trip reinforced my suspicions that, despite my Pacific Rim heritage, I'm about as American as you get."

As for the inevitable questions about those unending rumors that his father's death was drug- or gang-related, Lee said they don't particularly bother him. "When I was a kid, I read those (tabloid) stories and, I'll tell you, they didn't do me any good. But I went to my mother and we talked about it and I know there's no truth in them. I now put them in the same category as Elvis sightings."