Shannon Lee is cheerfully recounting the time she went to a darkness retreat in Oregon. For four days, she stayed in an underground cabin in the woods, so dark she couldn’t see her own hands. Most people would find this terrifying. But for Lee, it was liberating, she says. “All you have are your thoughts and feelings, and they start to bubble up. So you get to look at a lot of things and it can be uncomfortable. I came out very energised.”
The 54-year-old daughter of Hong Kong American martial arts icon Bruce Lee has always been a reflective soul. Her father’s death, when she was four and he was 32, and then the death 20 years later of her older brother, Brandon, aged 28, have made her that way. Talking over a video call from her office in Los Angeles, she describes herself as a “seeker”, who has always been interested in different paths to “healing”. She was inspired by her father, who was a philosopher at heart and a prodigious journaler, constantly writing down his thoughts and feelings about life and work in an ever-growing stack of notebooks.
Her new book, In My Own Process, brings together letters, photos, drawings and poems from Bruce, all of which show “the depth of the challenges he faced, the depth of his accomplishments”. It includes essays and interviews with some of his famous friends and fans, including Jackie Chan, Ang Lee and basketball star and former co-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Lee wants people to see that her father was “more than just the kung fu guy”. Bruce was, she says, “a deep thinker, a very thoughtful and forward-thinking person”.
Bruce remains one of the greatest and most influential martial artists ever. He overcame widespread racism in the entertainment industry to become the first Asian superstar in Hollywood, and he fought hard against on-screen stereotypes, refusing to take on any parts he considered racist.
Frustrated with the lack of good roles in the US, he went to Hong Kong and made The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon, all huge box office hits. He died, tragically young, in 1973, six days before the release of Enter the Dragon, which would become a global smash. The cause of death was a cerebral oedema brought on by an allergic reaction to headache medication.
Lee’s memories of her father are somewhat hazy. What she remembers the most is his energy. “He could play really dynamically. He was a bit strict. I remember the feeling of being with him, the brightness of that, the warmth. The love is so strong.” She does have vivid recollections of Bruce’s funeral in Hong Kong, which saw thousands of people lining the streets. “It was such a spectacle. I just remember this state of dissociation and shock as you’re being dragged through this whole procession.”
Lee has been the guardian of her father’s legacy since she was in her 30s and co-founded the Bruce Lee Foundation with her mother, Linda, a former teacher who met the actor when she was a student in one of his martial arts classes at the University of Washington. After his death, wild conspiracy theories started to spread: that he had been poisoned by a jealous lover, assassinated by triad members, or had taken a drug overdose.
The theories “speak to the greatness of his life”, says Lee. “When I was a kid, sometimes I would find it annoying when people would say he was killed by ninjas or the ‘death touch’ [a martial arts technique] or rival gangs. But now I look at it and go: he was a warrior and nobody thinks that someone like that should just pass.”
Lee is gregarious, thoughtful and chatty, with the most delightful laugh. She grew up in southern California with Brandon, who was four years older than her. Her mother later remarried twice. As a child, Lee loved to escape into her imagination and would talk to herself. “I played a lot of pretend. When I got a little older, I wrote stories. I became an avid reader.” While her father and brother were “larger than life”, she was more reserved.
Lee was close to her brother, who she describes as “a big, boisterous ball of energy”. He liked to play pranks on her. “He was my tormentor. But when it mattered, he was also my protector. If someone was being mean to me, he would step in.” When he became an actor, she worked as his assistant on the 1992 film Rapid Fire. “He would give advice to me.”
Lee is a classically trained singer with a degree in vocal performance. She thought about pursuing music as a career but, in the end, decided to follow in the footsteps of her father and brother and become an actor. Her first role, when she was in her early 20s, was in a biopic of her father’s life, 1993’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, as a singer performing California Dreamin’ at a party. “It was sort of sweet, actually, because in that scene, my mum tells my dad that she’s pregnant with me.”
She started practising martial arts in her 20s as a way to feel closer to her father. Bruce studied the style of Wing Chun and went on to invent his own method of martial arts, known as Jeet Kune Do. “He created his own art,” Lee says. But she felt under pressure to live up to her father when she became an actor. Lee was mainly cast in action films, playing a sex worker in Cage II and a gangster’s mistress in High Voltage. Like her father, she landed her first leading role in a Hong Kong production, the martial arts thriller Enter the Eagles.
“I have never been the same kind of martial artist that my father is,” she says. “There are very few people who are. It was very hard because people had an expectation. They only wanted to hire me to do martial arts action stuff, and they wanted me to be really good.”
But she wasn’t able to commit to her new career because, just as she was starting out, her brother died in a tragic accident on the set of The Crow. After roles in Legacy of Rage and Showdown in Little Tokyo, Brandon, who had his father’s smouldering good looks and natural gift for martial arts, was on the cusp of stardom when he was accidentally shot and killed by a faulty prop gun, fired by his co-star Michael Massee during filming, in 1993.
Lee’s mother called to tell her he had been injured. She jumped on a plane from New Orleans, where she was living, to Wilmington, North Carolina, where The Crow was being filmed. “I had a sense that he had died when we were on the plane,” she says. Brandon was buried next to Bruce at the Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington.
Lee was heartbroken. She had big plans with her brother. He had asked her to be the best man at his wedding after becoming engaged to Eliza Hutton, a personal assistant. Lee was planning to move to Los Angeles, where he was living, to pursue acting. “We were both really looking forward to being able to spend time together.”
After his death, she fell into a deep depression. “I was struggling and in a lot of pain. In my mind, I kept saying over and over to myself in a silent loop: ‘I can’t feel like this. I can’t live like this. This is too much. How do I make it stop?’” Her father’s journals had been piled up in boxes and stuffed into filing cabinets around the house. She started to read them only when Brandon died.
“My favourite quote of his was: ‘The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I didn’t take it.’ It just hit me in the chest. It told me: the only person who can solve this for you is you.” This newfound awareness helped in unexpected ways. “I started to realise that I had been mildly depressed most of my life and had not known it.”
The death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed when a live round was discharged from a prop revolver held by the actor Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust in 2021, brought back bad memories of her brother’s death. “The circumstances are very similar,” says Lee. “It really just makes you go, why is making a movie more important than a person’s life?” Last month, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Rust’s armourer, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Baldwin has also been charged with involuntary manslaughter, to which he has pleaded not guilty, and will stand trial in July.
Lee supports the banning of live guns from film sets. “I think that is not unreasonable. But if you’re not going to do that, then I think you have to put laws and better safety measures in place than what exists currently.” Brandon’s death was ruled as negligence and, although no charges were brought, Lee’s mother successfully sued the film-makers for an undisclosed amount.
Thirty years after the film’s release, The Crow is getting a reboot that is coming out later this year, starring the Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård and musician FKA twigs. Lee has seen the first look images of a heavily tattooed Skarsgård as Eric Draven. “I feel like nobody will ever replace my brother in that role. He embodied that character beautifully. No one likes to see someone’s legacy brushed over by something else. It’s a beloved character so I understand why they continue to make it. But I think my brother’s performance will always stand.”
Losing a father and then a brother when she was so young was devastating, she says. “Their absence in your life is deafening. You’re left trying to figure out how to continue. Then there are the moments where you go: ‘I wish that person was here.’ People often ask questions like: ‘What do you think life would have been like if …’ I never did too much of that kind of fantasising, because it’s not helpful. First of all, it’s never going to be the case. I need to deal with what is, rather than what could have been. But, you know, processing all of that is life’s work.”
She made the move to Los Angeles a few months after Brandon’s death and muddled on with her acting career, but her heart wasn’t in it. Eventually, she decided to quit. “It was a really tortured time in my life,” she says. “I was in deep grief over my brother. I was not really able to show up for that in the way that I would be able to now. I was very hard on myself.”
Lee was too fragile at the time to handle the endless scrutiny about her appearance and the countless rejections that come with being an actor. “If you’re not in a good place, it can be very challenging.” She was also thinking about starting a family with her husband, Ian Keasler, a lawyer, whom she married in 1994 after becoming friends at university. The couple have a 21-year-old daughter, Wren.
Recently, she made her return to acting after 21 years, in Warrior, the Asian-led martial arts crime drama that was created from an eight-page treatment by Bruce. Lee is an executive producer on the show and appeared in a cameo as a grief-stricken mother. “It was nerve-racking, but I really loved it.” She doesn’t have any other acting projects in the pipeline, but she calls her comeback a “gift”.
Bruce remains an enduring figure in popular culture. Quentin Tarantino was criticised for featuring a fight scene with the martial arts star in his 2019 film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, in which he portrayed Bruce as a cocky, inept fighter. Lee called out the director for depicting her father as a “buffoon”. “I don’t want to talk about it any more,” she says. “I get hate mail from his fans whenever I speak about it.”
Having her life so closely tied to her father and brother’s legacies has been a struggle sometimes, she admits, but Lee is grateful for the chance to express the love she has for her family. “Death has been a very valuable teacher for me. It’s taught me to live. When someone you love dies, you’re faced with the notion of mortality and you are forced to learn how to let go. Because if you attempt to hold on too tightly, it will destroy your life. It’s a hard lesson and it takes a long time to get there. But eventually you get there.”
In My Own Process, published by Genesis Publications, is available via TheBruceLeeBook.com and book stores from 23 April.
