Bruce lee: a life

Matthew Polly | SIMON & SCHUSTER

compiling vast archival material and more than 100 new interviews, journalist Matthew Polly weaves together an endlessly fascinating account of Bruce Lee’s life. Even those with only a passing interest in the Enter The Dragon star will be captivated. Lee Jun-fan was born in 1940, in San Francisco, the son of an opium-smoking opera star and a Eurasian aristocrat. Although he returned to Hong Kong with his parents soon afterwards, his joint Chinese and US citizenship prefigured the dualism that informed much of his legacy.

Brawling on the streets of Hong Kong, the young Lee played parts in Chinese melodramas and cha-cha performances. But kung fu was his first love, a passion he would develop into his own hybrid system that drew from western influences such as fencing.

Polly’s prose is precise, charting Lee’s discipleship of Ip Man, the infamous match with Wong Jack Man, his development of trademark moves (such as the one-inch punch) and his later leap to Hollywood stardom. Anecdotes abound (Bruce would perform jump kicks to ‘tickle’ the earlobes of those on set until he dislocated the jaw of one unfortunate crew member). Polly, however, doesn’t shy away from the less palatable parts of Lee’s character, with his womanising in particular brought to light.

Overall, this is lucid, erudite and insightful, and it’s difficult to imagine a more comprehensive account of Lee’s life. Definitive. Tim Coleman