NEW YORK Brandon Lee, son of the late martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee, is forging his own path to celebrity.

The 27-year-old actor stars in "Rapid Fire," now playing at Chicago area theaters. The film co-stars Powers Boothe, Nick Mancuso and Raymond Barrie.

Lee plays Jake Lo, an art student who sees his father murdered in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student revolution in Beijing. After coming to America, Jake witnesses a mob killing in New York's Chinatown. He testifies against the mobsters and enters the Witness Protection Program only to discover that the federal agents assigned to protect him are in fact corrupt and trying to kill him. He must protect himself using martial arts.

"Rapid Fire" is Lee's fourth movie and his first starring role. He previously appeared in the CBS-TV film "Kung Fu: The Movie" (1986), followed by "Legacy of Rage" for D & B Films of Hong Kong. He was also featured in "Showdown in Little Tokyo" (1991), which starred Dolph Lundgren.

Even before "Rapid Fire" was released, Lee started filming "The Crow," based on the underground comic books by James O'Barr.

He plays a rock 'n' roll musician who is murdered along with his girlfriend, but then he comes back from the dead to wreak havoc on the living.

The actor's budding career should be in solid shape after that, since he recently signed a multi-picture deal with Carolco and a three-picture deal with 20th Century Fox.

Lee says he always wanted to be in show business, from the time he first visited his father on a movie set.

"Nobody in my family ever pushed me to be an actor," he says, relaxing at his Los Angeles home, which he shares with girlfriend Lisa Hutton. "In fact, my mother was always - not dissuading me - but always wanting me to be aware of the realities of the business."

He wants it made clear that he is not just another martial-arts expert who became a screen actor in order to capitalize on his prowess. While attending Emerson College in Massachusetts, he performed in numerous plays. He has also studied at the Strasberg Academy in New York as well as in Los Angeles.

Bruce Lee died when his son was only 8 years old. "When Dad died, `Enter the Dragon' hadn't even come out in the United States yet, so it's really one of the saddest things because he never got to see how big it was, what a big sensation he created," Lee says. "He would have had a great time. Anybody would with that kind of success."

After her husband's death, Brandon's Scandinavian-American mother moved the family, which includes Lee's sister Shannon, from their home in Hong Kong to California.

"It was a whole different ball game all of a sudden," Lee says.

He had spoken some English in Hong Kong, but had gone to a

Cantonese school there. He quickly became fluent in English, and now

his Cantonese is pretty rusty.

"But I can still order a good meal and find out where the bathroom is and tell a woman she's beautiful," he says, laughing. "I'm not so good at understanding Cantonese anymore because it's all tones. There are five different tones just for the word `ho' and each different tone is a different word."

Though he speaks a different language now, Lee has carried on the martial-arts legacy of his father.

"I've got home videos . . . of me with my dad when I'm like 1 1/2 years old throwing kicks and stuff," he says. "You know, you always want to do what your dad does and when you're a kid you imitate your dad."

The 6-foot actor, who has a bodybuilder's physique, says when he was in school kids often taunted him.

"I used to get that hired-gun syndrome: `Oh, you're Bruce Lee's son? I can kick the stuffing out of you,' " he says. "It got extremely tiring."

While he enjoys martial arts a great deal, he doesn't want his film career to be associated with it forever. He! is interested in doing serious drama and mentions the playwright David Rabe as one of his favorite writers.

"I'm drawn to characters whose lives are spinning out of control," Lee says. "They are regular people who on the outside seem to be having a great time, but it's like they're expending all of their energy convincing themselves and other people that they're OK.

Transcribed by Samantha/BLM