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Bruce Lee was born on 27th November 1940, in San Francisco USA, while his father was on tour with the Chinese theatre group. This allowed Bruce to have joint citizenship for the USA and Hong Kong. He spent his first 18 years of his life in Hong Kong,during this time he starred in many Chinese films and was a popular child actor. |
| At the age of 13 he started his martial arts training with Yip Man in Wing Chun Kung Fu. |
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To get one to one training with Yip Bruce used to get to class early and wait at the door telling the other students as they arrived that there was no class that day. |
| Bruce excelled at Kung Fu and started learning as many styles as he could. |
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He was also a keen Cha-Cha dancer and won the Hong Kong Cha-Cha championships. He used his dancing skills to trade for lessons in Kung Fu. During his teens Bruce joined a Street gang and increasingly got in to more trouble as he got older. |
| His parents feared that if he carried on like this that he would end up in jail, so when he turned 18 they decided to pack him off to America to claim his citizenship there.
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On arriving he stayed at a family friend Ruby Chow's restaurant and to earn his keep he worked there in the evenings. His attitude seemed to change in America and he enrolled at the university of Washington studying Philosophy. To make extra money he started charging for Kung Fu lessons in the car park. |
| This picked up and Bruce was then able to open up his first Jun Fan Gung Fu school, he opened up a total of three before he went back to Hong Kong. To promote his schools Bruce attended many tournaments to give demonstrations on what would become Jeet Kune Do. |
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The most famous one was the longbeach in 1964, it was here that he was seen by Jay Sebring who told producer William Dozier. William invited Bruce for a screen test and signed him up for The Green Hornet.
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