'Huo is the first person [in the history of Chinese martial arts] who spread the idea that you don't have to triumph over others in order to prove yourself - that it's already enough for you not to rest on your laurels and improve yourself all the time,' Li says. 'When a nation was lagging behind in terms of development - like China a century ago, when the country could be carved up by foreign powers - the people might just need a powerful figure to come out and beat the hell out of people who call the Chinese 'the sick men of Asia'.

'That's what Bruce Lee was about. It's about individual heroism. Now that China is getting stronger we need to step back and think whether we still need all that. When someone calls you a 'sick man of Asia', should we just beat the daylights out of him? I don't think it's the proper way of manifesting our national spirit - after all, if I'm not sick he could call me all the names he wants. It doesn't hurt.'

Fearless is no Fist of Fury. Some of the latter's nationalist iconography remains: there are the manipulating foreign attaches plotting Huo's downfall over a game of cards in a smoky lounge, and Huo's victories over monstrous, villainous foreigners smack of jingoism. This time round, however, the hero never lands the deadly coup de grace - the fights end with the shamed challengers leaving the ring physically intact, with only their pride damaged.

'Violence is not the only solution,' Li says. 'I've been involved in action movies for more than two decades, and mostly I've seen films that say that violence should be countered by more violence. It's a formula.

'I tried to put across a new perspective on what martial arts means in my last few films, such as Hero and Danny the Dog.

'If someone is really good at fighting, it doesn't necessarily make him righteous,' he says of Danny the Dog. 'That's just one skill he managed to attain in his life. If he doesn't know how to put that to good use, however, he's no different to an animal which would fight for survival. What makes us different from animals is that we have a sense of responsibility, morality and love - what I wanted to propose at the end of that film and [Fearless] is how someone who is extraordinarily deft in martial arts attains humanity.'

Li, 42, says his younger self was like Huo's in Fearless. An established wushu champion by the age of 16 with dozens of titles under his belt - including 15 gold medals from China's national championships - his teenage years were spent 'with an inflated ego', boosted no doubt by a stellar performance in front of Richard Nixon at the White House in 1974 and the offer of a movie contract in 1979. Shaolin Temple, a film with an average plot but staggering martial arts moves, propelled Li to instant stardom. It would spawn two less successful sequels in the mid-1980s, both starring Li.

Li encountered his first setback on the set of Shaolin: a bad break to one of his legs. 'I underwent a seven-hour operation and the doctors told me I couldn't be a professional athlete again,' he says. 'Imagine what a shock it was for a teenager who was once dubbed a wushu child prodigy.'

Li recovered - only to sustain six more fractures in the next 25 years. 'Doctors have been warning that I can't take yet another big injury,' he says. 'It gives me immense mental pressure.'

Nor were all the scars purely physical. 'I remember being offered $3 million to make a film after Shaolin Temple,' he says. 'That was an astronomical amount for a teenager in the 1980s. But I was duty bound to return to the mainland to practise martial arts - in a place where you, along with all the toiling farmers nearby, earned two yuan a day. It was a major assault on how you see things - that such unfairness existed in the world.'

However, Li's scepticism didn't stop him cashing in: since his first post-Shaolin film, Dragon Fight (set in San Francisco, where he lived for a short spell in the late 1980s), Li has established himself as one of the most bankable and authentic action movie actors.

Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China (1991), in which Li plays kung fu hero Wong Fei-hung, established his credentials. His films from the first half of the 90s had staggering stunts, but inane plots - typically the sort of wronged-man- seeking-revenge plots with sensationalist violence that Li now says he hates. During this period he made Fist of Legend, Gordon Chan Ka-sheung's adaptation of Fist of Fury. The lowest point was 1995's High Risk, a muddy Wong Jing comedy featuring Li as an action movie star's bodyguard, forced to fight bomb-wielding terrorists who killed his family several years earlier. 'I was only human - and if I wanted to become famous I had to make money,' he says. 'It's only after you've achieved fame and fortune that you think you have enough.'

His epiphany came in 1999, when he became a practising Tibetan Buddhist. Surviving the December 2004 tsunami (he was in the Maldives at the time) and then the earthquakes in Kashmir last year (when he was visiting the Dalai Lama in Delhi) consolidated his new outlook on life, and also spurred him to do more charity work.

His decision to let go has been made easier by his success in Hollywood. His role as a menacing triad in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4 was followed by leading roles in Romeo Must Die, Kiss of the Dragon and The One. Unlike Jackie Chan - who seems typecast as a gravity-defying clown, Li managed to land roles that offer a more coherent storyline and acting versatility.

Li acknowledges, however, that he has been unable to escape the stereotypes. He's aware of how Hollywood producers usually cast him as a mean-looking cop or a sneering villain. 'They wouldn't shoulder the responsibility of portraying other cultures in a fair light - the most important thing for them is to make money,' he says. 'The Chinese aren't in a position of control in the commercial main-stream. We're just there to interpret other people's stories.'

Li says he's not upset about being typecast in kung fu movies. 'What Hollywood can't do and we can is martial arts,' he says. 'They have all the talent they want in comedy. It's just like, would a Hong Kong producer cast a well-known Indian star in his film? I don't think so.

'Remember that we were also calling foreigners hongmao guai [red-haired devils] 100 years ago. Things will change. Eventually.'

Fearless is screening now