The actors who have played Bruce Lee, from Jason Scott Lee, Bruce Li and Danny Chan to Mike Moh, in rip-offs, fantasies, and biopics fake and real

From the ‘Bruceploitation’ rip-offs that followed his death in 1973 to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, many films have portrayed Bruce Lee

Actors from Jason Scott Lee to Hong Kong’s Danny Chan, Aarif Rahman and Philip Ng have played the martial arts icon. Will Ang Lee deliver the definitive biopic?

Reading Time:4 minutes

Danny Chan as Bruce Lee in a still from “Ip Man 4: The Finale” (2019). A wide range of actors have portrayed the martial arts icon on the big screen in the 50 years since his untimely death on July 20, 1973. Photo: Mandarin Motion Pictures

Published: 4:15am, 19 Jul 2023Updated: 7:41am, 20 Jul 2023

The untimely death 50 years ago, on July 20, 1973, of Bruce Lee, the definitive screen icon of the martial arts genre, at the age of just 32, sent shock waves around the world.

Lee had single-handedly sparked global interest in kung fu cinema, and it was fuelled further by the one-two punch of his death and the release of his breakthrough Hollywood film Enter the Dragon just days later.

As the world demanded more Bruce Lee movies, unscrupulous producers scrambled to cash in on his fame, casting a swathe of unknown martial artists in films approximating those that had made Lee a household name.

And so the Bruceploitation genre was born, ushering in the likes of Bruce Le, Bruce Li and Bruce Lei among others. While some of these films were marketed as sequels or prequels to Lee’s hits, in others Lee himself now became the hero.

12:27

How Bruce Lee’s powerful ‘be water’ philosophy was central to his life and work

Ho Tsung-tao was perhaps the most prominent of the Bruce Lee imitators. Assuming the deliberately confusing mantle of Bruce Li, he starred in dozens of films during the 1970s and ’80s, and played Lee on no less than five occasions.