Brandon was born on 1 February 1965 in Oakland, California, to live in this world for 28 years. In 1967 was born Brandon's sister Shannon. Brandon lived the first 8 years with his family in Hong Kong. There are preserved a few emotive pictures of the small Brandon training martial arts with his dad Bruce. Then in 1973 Bruce died tragically and Linda with children returned to the USA. At first the family was settled in Seattle and later they moved to Rolling-Hills in California where the children went to school. Brandon was training the Karate and Thai Box hard and then he taught the martial arts as an intructor. Besides the sport career Brandon wanted to try the dramatic art and so at the age of 18 he went to Emerson College in Boston to start learning the dramatic arts there. He appeared before the camera quite early but the small part in "Kung Fu: The Movie" was not the right one yet. It was a bit symbolic that the participation in "Kung Fu: The Movie" was offered to Brandon because it was widely known that the main part should play Bruce Lee but finally into this part was appointed the American hero David Carradine. Though American, the knowlege of kung fu had to be raised in him while Bruce Lee was born with it.

In 1987 Brandon appeared in the movie directed by Tony Wharmby named "Kung Fu: The Next Generation". Not long after this he played in the movie of Ronny Yu "Legacy of Rage". The year 1989 was marked by the popular movie "Laser Mission" directed by B. J. Davis in which Brandon appeared in the lead part together with Debi Monahan. In 1991 he created one of his main characters in "Showdown in Little Tokyo". It was Brandon and the Swedish rebel Dolph Lundgren who were chosen by the competent specialist of action Mark L. Lester into main parts of this movie. It was then when Brandon said that he would like to play the classical parts for the stories full of brutality and violence disturbed him. About the relationship to his father he said: "I revere and admire him very much but I am not longing for to become a legend and compete with him."

In 1992 Brandon worked on the next action movie "Rapid Fire" (directed by Dwight H. Little) in which he created the role of the young man Jake who had to face the accidental conflict with the drug maffia because he was by coincidence in the wrong time at the wrong place. But it was already the year 1993 and the director Alex Proyas cast Brandon in the movie "The Crow" in which he played the character of Eric Draven, the rock musician, who came back from the beyond to revenge his death and the insidious murder of his girlfriend. This story took place in dark, inhospitable corners of the city into where returned determined and cooled avenger... In that time Brandon was looking forward to the end of the filming because he wanted to leave this depressive shooting location and in his thoughts he was with his charming girlfriend Lisa Hutton who was to become his wife in the course of the next few days, on 17 April 1993 exactly. Indeed something horrible and unexpected happened. About 8 days before the end of shooting Brandon worked on one of the last scenes when suddenly he was shot into the belly allegedly by a blank cartrige and suffered a serious injury. Immediately followed a transport to hospital where Brandon underwent a six hours long operation which however did not ward off the touch of the deadly crow wing. Brandon Lee died during the night from 31 March to 1 April and was laid to rest by the side of his father who died quite young too.

In 1996 was made another version about the return of the avenger from the beyond named "The Crow: City of Angels", directed by Tim Pope. In the main part was cast the young French actor Vincent Perez. I daresay anticipate that this version will be only a melancholic rememberance of Brandon Lee to whom we pay a tribute by this talk which bring the memory of him at least for a while!!!

Petr Böhm
Fighter's magazin 4/1997

Translated by Monika and Arwen.

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