Learning from a master: Every Hollywood star Bruce Lee trained in martial arts
It’s been over 50 years since Bruce Lee passed away at the age of just 32, when his career was right on the cusp of bursting into the stratosphere, but he remains every bit as iconic now as he ever was.
If 100 people were stopped on the street and asked to name the most famous on-screen martial artist there’s ever been, then there’s a high chance Lee would be the runaway victor. No offence intended to anyone who followed in his wake – many of whom were directly inspired by him – but that’s simply the position he occupies in pop culture.
An international crossover superstar who was just as big in America as he was in his native Hong Kong, Lee used his own inspirations and years of extensive training to develop the Jeet Kune Do philosophy, which he was happy to share with several well-known Hollywood names. Several of them became his firm friends, but there was the occasional simmering rivalry to be found along the way.
The cool-as-ice Steve McQueen was a close friend and training partner, and their bond saw Lee train the Bullitt star in the ways of martial arts while he was receiving advice on how to further his acting abilities. McQueen even served as a pallbearer at Lee’s funeral alongside James Coburn, another actor who studied under his tutelage.
Further illustrating just how much of a small-town Hollywood can be at times, Lee worked as an action director and played Winslow Wong in 1969’s Marlowe, which starred James Garner in the lead role. Garner was also a friend and former co-star of McQueen’s, although it’s sadly been lost to history which of the two was the more technically proficient.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar referred to Lee on his website as “not only my martial arts teacher but my close friend” on the 50th anniversary of his death, and he attributed the tutelage of the lightning-quick star as helping him stay largely injury-free during his legendary basketball career, while his feature film debut came in Game of Death.
Lee was credited as a ‘karate advisor’ on the 1968 spy comedy The Wrecking Crew, although he was much more impressed with Sharon Tate than he was with Dean Martin. Purportedly describing the latter as both “clumsy” and “lazy”, Tate sufficiently won him over to the point that they not only became friends, but he began instructing her then-partner Roman Polanski.
That led to the bizarre situation of the filmmaker launching an investigation into Lee in the aftermath of Tate’s murder based entirely on a pair of glasses before Charles Manson and his associates were found guilty of the crime. That’s quite the collection of names for the Enter the Dragon frontman to have trained at one time or another, but it just goes to show how ingratiated he was with the A-list before his untimely passing.
