Bruce Lee
A Life
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4.5 • 36 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The “definitive” (The New York Times) biography of film legend Bruce Lee—the martial arts icon who made kung fu a global phenomenon, shattered Hollywood stereotypes of Asian and Asian American actors, and became one of the most influential pop culture figures of the 20th century.
Forty-five years after Bruce Lee’s sudden death at just thirty-two, journalist and bestselling author Matthew Polly delivers the authoritative account of his extraordinary life and legacy. Meticulously researched over a decade and informed by more than one hundred interviews—including with Lee’s family, friends, colleagues, and the actress in whose bed he died—Bruce Lee is both sweeping and intimate.
Polly traces Lee’s evolution from Hong Kong child star to troubled teen, from charismatic martial arts teacher to trailblazing Asian American actor navigating a whitewashed Hollywood, to international superstar in Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury, and The Big Boss. He explores Lee’s family dynamics, his struggle to break through in the US entertainment industry, his intense work ethic, and the enduring mystery surrounding his untimely death.
Dispelling myths and revealing the man behind the legend, Bruce Lee is a deeply humanizing, page-turning biography of a boundary-breaking actor, father, fighter, and icon whose cultural impact endures across generations and continents.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
More than four decades after his final kung fu moves, Bruce Lee's legacy is as formidable as ever—and justifiably so. An international icon when he died at age 32, Lee helped popularize martial arts in North America. Bruce Lee: A Life chronicles his meteoric rise from troubled Hong Kong youth to popular teacher to telegenic renaissance man and Hollywood star. Drawing from extensive research and interviews, journalist Matthew Polly—the author of American Shaolin—reaches past Lee’s tough, movie-poster persona to paint a fully fleshed-out portrait of the man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This thorough, well-sourced biography from Polly (Tapped Out) is an engrossing examination of the life of a martial arts movie star and his shocking, early death. Lee was born in San Francisco in 1940, but his family moved to Hong Kong shortly after his birth. He started acting there as a child, and at age 16 began studying under kung fu master Ip Man. In 1959, Lee moved to Seattle in pursuit of a career acting and teaching kung fu. He landed a few roles in American television series such as The Green Hornet, but, eager for better roles, he moved back to Hong Kong, where he starred in such action movies as Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon. Polly describes Lee as a patron of kung fu who "sought to straddle East and West" yet routinely faced racism (relatives of his wife, Linda, refused to attend their wedding in 1964). He possessed a volatile temper, a dangerously obsessive work ethic, and a propensity for extramarital affairs. In 1973, Lee collapsed and died while dubbing dialogue for Enter the Dragon, and Polly is especially strong as he sifts through the sensational aftermath of Lee's death, rejecting tabloid rumors that he died in an actual fight and outdated medical opinions of death by "cannabis intoxication" in favor of the more logical cause heatstroke, given Hong Kong's heat wave that day. In what is certainly the definitive biography of Lee, Polly wonderfully profiles the man who constructed a new, masculine Asian archetype and ushered kung fu into pop culture.
Customer Reviews
JKD PADAWAN
Excellent read. Very well researched and explained.