Jackie Chan Remembers Fighting With Bruce Lee in ‘Enter the Dragon’

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Bruce Lee returned to the spotlight this past summer thanks to his cameo portrayal by Mike Moh in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Now, in a recent Instagram post, Jackie Chan remembers being on the set with the Hong Kong-America, martial-arts icon during the making of “Enter the Dragon.” That film made Lee a star the world over, and was one of Chan’s earliest appearances — as “Thug in Prison,” per IMDb.

On the Instagram account run by Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, Chan recalls wanting “Bruce Lee to hold me for as long as possible.”

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Bruce Lee’s appearance in “Once Upon the Time in Hollywood” has been the subject of much scrutiny in recent months, with Shannon Lee slamming the film’s portrayal of her father, and director Tarantino rushing to defend it. While Shannon Lee says the film shows her dad as an “arrogant asshole who was full of hot air,” Tarantino told the press, “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy… The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,’ well, yeah, he did. All right? Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that.”

Throughout his career, Bruce Lee pushed himself to the brink. His regime included dieting and exercising way beyond the call of duty in order to stay fit for his martial-arts movies, whose fights scenes he held total creative control over, which was rare for any movie star at the time, let alone an Asian-American one.

See below as Chan talks about his short but memorable time with Lee.

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