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Sun Jose Mercury News
7/22/92
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LEE FOLLOWS FOOTWORK OF FAMED FATHER

WATCH out, Jean-Claude, Dolph, Chuck. Here's a newcomer with the best of martial-arts pedigrees: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce.

The 27-year-old Lee will assault the nation's screens in August in "Rapid Fire," the first of three films from 20th Century Fox.

His face is narrow and strong, the cheekbones hinting of his Asian heritage (his mother is Swedish-American). He's lean and less muscled than Van Damme, Lundgren, Norris and the others, but wisdom would dictate not challenging him to any kind of tussle.

That happened when he was a student at a suburban Los Angeles high school.

''I definitely got the 'hired gun' syndrome, the 'fastest gun in the West' syndrome," he said, smiling. "I was on the soccer team. Often when we played another school, there was some guy who had heard who I was, and we would have a fight after the game. It was silly, but at the time I didn't have the wisdom to realize that."

Brandon was 8 in 1973 when his father died suddenly and mysteriously at age 32. Like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and others who died young, Bruce Lee became the stuff of movie legend. Born in San Francisco and educated at the University of Washington, his martial arts prowess won him work in Hollywood and Hong Kong.

Brandon Lee is modest about his chances to follow his father's fame. "We'll just have to wait and see what happens when the movie comes out," he said. But he makes no secret that films have been a long-held ambition.

''It's pretty much what I've wanted to do since I was very young. Nobody in my family ever pushed me toward acting. But even when I was in elementary school, it was what I wanted to do."

Brandon Lee was born in Oakland and spent his early years in Hong Kong. He spoke Cantonese at school and with playmates, English at home.

''Going to my father's movie sets was my favorite thing to do," he recalled. "He shot all of his (starring) films in Hong Kong; only one, 'Enter the Dragon,' was with an American company, Warner Bros.

''I started doing martial arts as soon as I could walk. I have a bunch of movies that my mother transferred to video, which show me doing all kinds of things with my dad. I trained with him until he died."

After Bruce Lee died, his widow moved their son and daughter to California. Then, after a rather rocky career in high school, Brandon attended Emerson College in Massachusetts, then studied acting and martial arts in New York. He's continuing his dramatic training here, because he says he doesn't want to do just martial-arts films all his life.

Illustration:Photo

PHOTO: 'I started doing martial arts as soon as I could walk. . . . I trained with (my dad) until he died. '