Bruce Lee is a martial arts legend and Hollywood icon.
That status has spawned a lot of rumors and innuendo.
And Bruce Lee’s daughter sent Hollywood into chaos with one new book that debunks the vicious rumors against her father.
Bruce Lee is considered by many to be the most influential martial artist of all time thanks to the impact he had on popularizing the sport globally, especially through his time in Hollywood, starring in American films like Enter the Dragon and Game of Death.
He has even been credited with paving the way for the global popularization of mixed martial arts, like that of the UFC, through his founding of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy.
Rampant theories
But his sudden death in 1973 from an allergic reaction to painkillers sparked myths about a drug overdose and a family curse – a narrative that was explored in the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
The curse narrative also grew when Lee’s son, Brandon, was killed in an accident on the set of the 1994 action thriller The Crow.
Brandon Lee was shot on set when the tip of a bullet was mistakenly left in a gun due to porous gun safety; the gun was later loaded with blanks, and the blank fired the tip of the bullet that struck and killed Lee.
But now, Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon, is publishing her father’s definitive story in her new book, In My Own Process.
Her story
“Lately, there’s been this narrative popping up that my father was angry all the time and arrogant and an a**hole,” Shannon Lee explained in an interview.
Lee is likely referring to her father’s unflattering portrayal in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
“Look, everybody can be angry sometimes,” she continued. “I’m not saying he was never angry. I know, especially when he was younger, he could have a temper. But his temper and his anger were a lot of times born out of frustration. Frustration with the way he was treated, or frustration with people promising things and then not following through. . . But through his self-work, he came to understand that.”
Lee was reportedly promised the lead role in the hit TV series Kung Fu, but David Carradine was cast instead, much to Lee’s dismay.
“He has many. . . writings about it, how it’s easy to be cocky and arrogant,” Lee added. “It’s harder to be honest and express who you really are. [But] there’s this narrative being spread now that he was this angry, arrogant, cocky person. He was extremely confident, which I think can be mistaken for arrogance sometimes. He cared intensely about doing things well. . .We tend to want to put people in a box and say, ‘This is what this person was like.’ But the truth is, those people didn’t know him, or they only crossed paths with him very, very briefly. That’s something I’m trying to correct.”
In My Own Process is now available for purchase.