About Me
I was born in San Fransisco in November 1940 the son of a famous Chinese opera singer. I moved to Hong Kong when I soon became a child star in the growing Eastern film industry. My first film was called The birth of Mankind, my last film which was uncompleted at the time of my death in 1973 was called Game of Death. I was a loner and was constantly getting myself into fights, with this in mind I looked towards Kung Fu as a way of disciplining myself. The famous Yip Men taught me his basic skills, but it was not long before I was mastering the master. Yip Men was acknowledged to be one of the greatest authorities on the subject of Wing Chun a branch of the Chinese Martial Arts. I mastered this before progressing to my own style of Jeet Kune Do.At the age of 19 I left Hong Kong to study for a degree in philosophy at the University of Washington in America. It was at this time that I took on a waiter's job and also began to teach some of his skills to students who would pay. Some of the Japanese schools in the Seattle area tried to force me out, and there was many confrontations and duels fought for me to remain.I met his wife Linda at the University I was studying in. My Martial Arts school flourished and I soon graduated. I gained some small roles in Hollywood films - Marlowe- etc, and some major stars were begging to be students of the Little Dragon. James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin to name a few. I regularly gave displays at exhibitions, and it was during one of these exhibitions that I was spotted by a producer and signed up to do The Green Hornet series. The series was quite successful in the States - but was a huge hit in Hong Kong. I visited Hong Kong in 1968 and I was overwhelmed by the attention I received from the people he had left.I once said on a radio program if the price was right I would do a movie for the Chinese audiences. I returned to the States and completed some episodes of Longstreet. I began writing his book on Jeet Kune Do at roughly the same time.Back in Hong Kong producers were desperate to sign me for a Martial Arts film, and it was Raymond Chow the head of Golden Harvest who produced The Big Boss. The rest as they say is history.
