Lee's sister-in-law, her five children, servants, the servant's child, and many pets. Lee, Bruce and his siblings Phoebe, Agnes, Peter, and later, Robert, but also Mr. Living in this two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment were not only Mr. They had a family home in Kowloon, a suburb of Hong Kong. Bruce Lee made his acting debut in San Francisco in a movie role as an infant being carried by his father in The Golden Gate Girl, (1940).Ī few months after Bruce's birth, the family moved back to China. "Bruce" was never used as his name until he enrolled at school. At home he was called Sai Fon, meaning Small Phoenix. The nurse at the hospital suggested the name Bruce - Grace named him Jun Fan meaning "return again" - because she felt he would come back to live in America someday. His mother, Grace, a Catholic, was the daughter of a German father and a Chinese mother. His father, Lee Hoi Chuen, an actor on tour with Hong Kong's Cantonese Opera Company, was Chinese. He is buried at Lake View Cemetery on Seattle's Capitol Hill.īruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, at the Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Bruce Lee died suddenly on July 20, 1973, while working on the film The Game of Death in Hong Kong.
His roles in the 1966-1967 television series Green Hornet and the 1973 film Enter the Dragon won international acclaim and made Kung Fu a household word around the globe. He met and married his wife Linda before pursuing his TV and film career in Hollywood and in Hong Kong. In Seattle he began teaching martial arts and established his first studio. Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce moved to Seattle in 1959 to work at Ruby Chow's Chinese restaurant and to attend the University of Washington. Bruce Lee popularized Kung Fu and other Asian martial arts disciplines during a brief but influential career as an instructor and as an actor on television and in feature films.