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Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA)

August 21, 1992

Brandon Lee pursues an acting career more than JUST FOR KICKS

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" with Powers Boothe, Nick Mancuso and Raymond Barrie. In the film, which opens at area theaters today, 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 also was featured in "Showdown in Little Tokyo" (1991), which starred Dolph Lundgren.

Now he's at work on "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 multipicture 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 his 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 decided to become 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 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 laughs.

"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."

Although 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."

Since he was 13, he has been training with a man who was his father's senior student at the time of his death. And Lee worked as the fight choreographer for "Rapid Fire."

But 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."

One of his Hollywood role models is Mel Gibson.

"At the beginning (of his career), he did `Mad Max' (1979), which is just an action movie, and then he had the credibility to go off and do a movie like `The Year of Living Dangerously' (1983) or `Mrs. Soffel' (1984)," Lee says. "I hope to do the same."

Despite his multipicture deals and his ambitious goals, Lee still has typical human concerns.

"I'm really bummed that I don't have any friends," he says sadly.

"In my early 20s, all the guys I used to be really good friends with and I were going to conquer the world. We were going to form a theater group and make our own films and write our own scripts and everything. None of that ever happened.

"Now when I call, it's like, `Yeah, let's get together next week. I'll give you a call.' "

Some of his old friends have gone into acting, but he says it's hard not to feel competitive with them.

"It's the actor's credo," Lee says. "Not only must I succeed, but all my friends must fail."

Transcribed by Samantha/BLM