Bruce Lee: the big boss and the $3 million man
The burgeoning film star was blown away by his success when The Post spoke to him in 1971
The first thing Bruce Li does when he meets somebody is to give them the most athletic handshake this side of the International Date Line.
The recipient of the handshake generally spends the following half-hour or so sitting around and gingerly counting his knuckles, just to make sure they are all still there.
Li, in case you have been hiding in a cave for the for the last few months, is the newest superstar in the Mandarin film world, and he reached that position chiefly by being a very tough guy indeed, trained in bare-handed combat and stuff like that.
It wasn’t until after he made his film “The Big Boss,” in fact, that most people discovered he was a heck of a good actor as well as being a formidable fistfighter.
“When I decided to come back to Hongkong and do the film for Raymond Chow, I prepared by going to see a whole bunch of Mandarin movies,” he said.
“They were awful. For one thing, everybody fights all the time, and what really bothered me was that they all fought exactly the same way. Wow, nobody’s really like that.