- Born
- DiedMarch 31, 1993 · Wilmington, North Carolina, USA (accidental gunshot wound from faulty prop revolver)
- Birth nameBrandon Bruce Lee
- Height5′ 11½″ (1.82 m)
- Born on February 1, 1965 to Bruce Lee (Martial Arts idol) and Linda Lee Cadwell. Brother to Shannon Lee. In 1970-71, they moved to Hong Kong, where Brandon lived until age eight, becoming fluent in Cantonese. By the time he was able to walk, he was already involved in learning about martial arts from his father.
Brandon attended high school in Los Angeles, where he realized that he had also inherited acting ability along with his martial arts skills. In 1983, he was expelled from school because of misbehavior, but received his diploma at Miraleste High School. He continued his education and interest in acting at Emerson College in Massachusetts, where he majored in theatre. Having chosen an acting career, he studied at the Strasberg Academy, with Eric Morris in New York and in Los Angeles, and in Lynette Katselas' class in Los Angeles.
His first professional job as an actor came at age twenty, when casting director Lynn Stalmaster asked him to read for a CBS television film, Kung Fu: The Movie (1986). Lee's first role in a feature film was Legacy of Rage (1986) (aka "Legacy of Rage" (1986)) for D.M. Films of Hong Kong, followed by a co-starring role in Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991). He was also in Rapid Fire (1992), and The Crow (1994). He turned down offers to be in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993).
Brandon died (while filming) at the age of 28, of what is to be believed, a brain hemorrhage on the set of The Crow (1994). The film crew shot a scene in which it was decided to use a gun without consent from the weapons coordinator, who had been sent home early that night. They handed Michael Massee the gun loaded with full power blanks and shot the scene, unaware that a bullet had become dislodged from a previous shot and had lodged itself in the barrel. Upon shooting of the scene the blank round forced the bullet out the barrel striking Brandon Lee. The crew only noticed when Lee was slow getting up. The doctors worked desperately for five hours, but it was no use. The bullet had lodged itself in Mr Lee's lower spine. He was pronounced dead at 1:04 P.M. the next day. He was supposed to marry Eliza Hutton on April 17, 1993. His body was flown to Seattle to be buried beside his father in Lake View Cemetery.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Caryn Liles <kml@io.org>
- Parents
- RelativesShannon Lee(Sibling)Hoi-Chuen Lee(Grandparent)Grace Ho(Grandparent)
- Usually played a character on the wrong side of the law
- Often played rebellious but charming characters with a sly sense of humor
- His martial arts skill
- Growing up in Bruce's shadow wasn't always easy for the younger Lee. As a child, Brandon was about to sign up with a local martial-arts studio, until he noticed a large poster of his father on the wall. Brandon ran from the dojo in tears. As a teenager, he was kicked out of two different high-schools (once after an "altercation" with the vice-principal) and dropped out of a third. After giving up on high school, Lee took some time to clear his head and spent 1982 hitchhiking around the United States before giving high school one last shot by writing and passing a high school equivalency test.
- The manner of his death is as follows: Michael Massee, the actor portraying Funboy, was required to fire a .44 magnum revolver loaded with blanks at Lee. The revolver had been inspected days earlier for a previously filmed scene in which it was not fired but needed to be seen loaded. Dummy rounds are used for this, which have a bullet, a spent primer, but no powder. One of the dummy rounds had a bullet, a live primer, and no powder. When test-fired, the primer propelled the bullet into the barrel, where it stopped. The gun was then rechecked, but no anomalies were found because the primer was now spent and the barrel was not inspected. Then, when filming the fateful scene days later, the same gun was used with blanks. Blanks are fully charged rounds with no bullets, but there was a bullet in the barrel. The blank round propelled it into Lee's abdomen just as if he had been shot with a live .44 magnum round. Michael Massee spent a year, devastated by what happened, deciding whether or not to return to acting.
- Was Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski's original choice and source of inspiration for the character of Thomas "Neo" Anderson in The Matrix (1999).
- He was a troubled youngster but an outstanding surrogate-parent. When his actress-sister Shannon Lee was arrested for underage-joyriding in their mom's car, Brandon sat Shannon down and gave her a classic "It's Okay To Have Fun But Don't Ever Take It Too Far" lecture. Indeed, Shannon claims that if Brandon had lived to see her wedding day, he would have walked her down the aisle.
- Dedication at the end of Lee's last film, The Crow (1994), reads "For Brandon and Eliza (Hutton)".
- I don't want to be remembered as the son of Bruce Lee.
- I always had a pretty good knack for raising hell.
- Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
- [About The Crow (1994)] "It's a story about justice for victims".
- [About The Crow (1994)] "I've done other films with violence in them, but I must say I've never done anything where I felt the violence was as justified as it is in this...This is justice".
- The Crow (1994) - $750,000
- Rapid Fire (1992) - $270,000
- Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) - $250,000
- Legacy of Rage (1986) - $200,000
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