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Sky International
Oct/Nov 92

Brandon Lee

By Edwin J. Bernard

Brandon lee has mixed feelings about the legacy left for him by his father, the late martial arts legend Bruce Lee. "I don't want to be known only as Bruce Lee's son – to take a magic-carpet ride on my father's achievements, "says the 27-year-old six foot actor, who looks more like the love child of David Hasselhoff than the Enter the Dragon star who died in 1973. "I suppose I'm partly to blame too. I could have been a dentist."

Yup, Brandon only has himself to blame because every film he's made so far – Kung Fu: The Movie for American television, Legacy of Rage in Hong Kong, Showdown in Little Tokyo with Dolph Lundgren – has been a martial arts action movie, culminating in this month's Rapid Fire, in which Brandon kick-boxes his way through a violent world of heroin dealers and mob murders.

Yet somehow Brandon's knockout Eurasian looks and not inconsiderable charm have caught the attention of certain US critics. "It's very flattering," he says, "but if you're going to get turned on by all that, then I guess you have to take seriously the bad things they say about you too." Such as one critic who referred to him as a "smirking American Ken doll, fresh out of Hollywood High." But what the heck, Brandon doesn't think he's that great himself. "Every times I see myself on screen, I'm just thankful that it's not really, really bad," he laughs.

However, Lisa Hutton, his story-editor girlfriend of two years, with whom he shares a rented house in Beverly Hills, obviously thinks he's OK, though marriage seems out of the question. "We're very much in love and things are great," he says, coming over all new mannish, only to blow it by saying, "But why buy the cow when you can milk it?" Yes, Brandon, very 1890's.