Brandon Lee

(full name Brandon Bruce Lee February 1, 1965 - March 31, 1993)

Brandon Lee was born on February 1, 1965 in Oakland, California. Brandon's father was the famous martial artist and action star Bruce Lee. Ancestors on his mother's side were English and Swedish, on his father's side - Chinese. Like his father, he died on the set at the age of 28. When Brandon was 3 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles, at that time no one offered his father roles in movies, so in 1965 they were forced to return to Hong Kong. Brandon Lee spent his entire childhood in Hong Kong, where he learned the Cantonese language and mastered the technique of Jit Kung-Do. At the age of five, he could already walk on his hands and reach his father's chin in a jump. in Hong Kong, Brandon started going to the school where his father had previously attended as well. The school required him to wear a uniform and speak and write only in Chinese. As Bruce's popularity began to grow, Brandon began to have problems in college because of his status as the son of a star. It got to the point where bodyguards had to accompany Brandon and his sister Shannon to college to avoid the possibility of them being kidnapped. Brandon was eight years old when his father died. Linda Emery, Brendon's mother, took him and his sister to America. At first they lived in Seattle, then in California. When they moved to Los Angeles, Linda got her son into a military art school. The IMB academy was at that time run by Bruce Lee's students, Dan Inosanto and Richard Bustillo, and was located in California. He was twice expelled from the school for bad behavior. As a child, Brandon raised rats in his room and then sold them to local pet stores as food for snakes. Brandon read a lot, and admitted that he never picked up a newspaper or watched television. He loved to play chess, Trick or Treat, Pin, poker and ping pong. While still in school, he performed on the stages of small theaters. After high school, Brandon Lee went to Emerson College in Boston, where he studied acting. In addition to studying in college, Brandon took acting lessons at the New York Lee Strasberg Institute. Brandon Lee soon decides to try himself in Hollywood, but here he is perceived as the son of Bruce Lee. After the filming of "Kung Fu: The Movie Version" and "Pulp Fiction" Brandon Lee goes to China. Here he gets his first starring role in Legacy of Wrath. Back in Hollywood again, Lee starred in a number of TV series. The role in the movie "Showdown in Little Tokyo," which he played with Dolph Lundgren, was for Brandon a real breakthrough. In 1990, Brandon Lee met Eliza Hutton. Elise was working as a personal assistant to director Renee Harlin. They met in one of the offices of Twentieth Century Fox Studios. In early 1991 they began living together, and in October 1992 they announced their engagement.
February 1, 1993 in Wilmington began shooting the film, and on the same day Brandon was 28 years old. Near the end of filming the movie, in one scene where the main character is shot with a gun, at 00:30 the actor was wounded by a .44 caliber revolver shot by actor Michael Massey, who played one of the villains (Fanboy). A plug stuck in the barrel was not seen by crew members and flew out of the barrel when the blank round was fired. The actor was shot in the abdomen, a foreign body lodged in his spine, causing extensive blood loss. Twelve hours later, Brandon Lee died at a hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina. Doctors pronounced Brandon Lee dead at 1:3 p.m. on March 31, 1993, from continuous hemorrhaging. Brandon died eighteen days before his own wedding. He and Eliza Hutton were already engaged and were to be married immediately after filming ended, on April 17, 1993, in Mexico City. A private funeral was held on April 3, 1993. Brandon Lee was buried next to his father in Seattle at Lake View Cemetery on the shores of Lake Washington in the spot that Linda, his mother, had originally reserved for herself.