I've studied martial arts, but of course I'm not anywhere near the level of my father. Still, people assume I'm a lethal weapon anyway!
— Shannon Lee
My father was a rather active guy, and he was often engaged in something if not physically, then mentally.
Philosophical ideas and sayings are great. They give us a little boost, a nudge in the arm, a fire in the belly.
The Bruce Lee Action Museum will represent action in the sense that the word is not just used to mean action in the martial arts or films. It is really meant to be a much broader definition as far as taking action, my father's belief of self-actualization.
BruceLee.com will be the beacon of all things Bruce Lee on the Internet. The site will include everything from facts about Bruce Lee to digital content to merchandise. I'll also be writing a blog. My father's fans have been asking for a place to find information and communicate with each other. This site will be a meeting place for our community.
I don't think that anyone could try to be my father, I think he was extremely unique, and if anybody were to try to act like him and pull off the action in the same way, that would be a mistake. Trying to give a Bruce Lee-esque performance would be an epic failure.
Certainly, there are very few wholly original ideas in the world; there are usually people coming to the same conclusions or carrying out experiments, whether publicly or privately.
When I started acting in my twenties, a director on the set of an action film shouted, 'Just do it like your dad would.' I couldn't. I can only do things as I'd do them.
There's so much I want to do. But after all I've been through, I realize nothing is more important to me than family.
I just need to be on the path to my own self-cultivation, my own self-actualisation.
There have been projects out there involving my father, but they've lacked a complete understanding of his philosophies and artistry. They haven't captured the essence of his beliefs in martial arts or storytelling. The only way to get audiences to understand the depth and uniqueness of my father is to generate our own material.
My father was up against so many different types of resistance. His whole life was an interplay of East and West. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, which was under British rule then.
We preserve the legacy of my father through an education approach. We award scholarships. We do classes at schools about my father's philosophy and life.
If you take the yin-yang, it has a piece of the other inside itself. You can't be too much of one thing and be balanced.
My father didn't compete ever in martial arts tournaments because they were not real. They were tag tournaments or touch tournaments, which he thought was bizarre and not really what the martial arts is about.
The thing that my father was absolutely brilliant at doing was being Bruce Lee. Nobody was able to do what he did or be like he was.
If I can learn how to rely on my own strength, I can see the answers to my problems usually lie right there, within the problem itself.
My dad didn't see limitations in himself or in other people. He did what he did his way and left behind an extremely unique footprint.
My father talked about training as being more about the human spirit than just about your muscles.
In my 20s, when I was acting, I probably had a little bit of a personality crisis in the sense that everybody related to me as Bruce Lee's daughter.
I had an acting career for a little while back in the '90s. I had gotten into that because I was interested in acting, but I was not really as centered as I needed to be to fully pursue that career, and I was doing some films I thought were not of the best quality.
I always thought that a film about how my father's life was shaped in his early years in Hong Kong would be a worthwhile story to share so we could better understand him as a human being and a warrior.
I don't think 'Enter The Dragon' should ever be remade.
I lost my father when I was four, so maybe that was always in the background. Losing my brother kicked it into overdrive. When you get to such an intense place of suffering, you either have the choice to continue suffering or figure a way not to.
My mother raised us out of the limelight and told us not to say we were Bruce Lee's children, so I had a normal childhood. I didn't run in Hollywood circles or go to premieres.
I'm definitely the lazy one in the family.
When I have struggled with things like being Bruce Lee's daughter, it's his words that have guided me: his words that said that I just need to have faith in myself, believe in myself, and express myself.
My father was prolific when it came to writing: day-timers, journals. He wrote on pieces of loose-leaf paper that he held on to, and he wrote in spiral notebooks.
My father chose the yellow-and-black tracksuit that he wore in 'Game of Death' to represent his idea of 'the style of no style.'
One of the interesting things about my father was that what you see on-camera is a lot of what he was like in real life.
You have no idea how many bags of money I've had to turn down. But if something doesn't match up with our goals - if it's too violent, or even if it's just too boring - my father may have been a philosopher, but he was always an entertainer - we're not going to take the money.
I will say that my father loved to teach and was a very gifted teacher. He probably would have been an excellent coach and trainer.
I've dedicated a lot of my life to running the Bruce Lee businesses and continuing his legacy. Some people say I'm doing that to make money or to emulate him. That couldn't be further from the truth; I do it because I'm inspired by his message.
Not everybody knows I'm Bruce Lee's daughter.
The way I know my father is not through media. The way I know my father is in number of different ways. It's through the people who knew him well, his friends, my family. It's also through his own words, because he wrote voluminously.
I think the thing that I think about the most when I consider my father's philosophies is attaining that third stage of performance where you no longer have to think about what you're doing; you've worked long and hard enough to be able to have your body respond when you want it without your mind getting in the way.
I started studying Jeet Kune Do in my early 20s.
Our goal is simple. It is to continue to inspire people through my father's legacy. There is a lot of value in continuing to put that energy out into the consciousness.
The EA Sports UFC development team has been incredible to work with, and they've done a great job capturing the look and feel of my father.
One thing I will say about my father is that he was very much out in the forefront talking about his beliefs about being a complete fighter and attaching a philosophy to that and teaching it.
I have a degree in vocal performance, I'm a classically trained singer, and I studied musical theatre.
At the movies, when I see Sandra Bullock or Winona Ryder, I think, 'I can do that!'
The struggle through the grief was a huge growing process for me. There were gifts that came from it. I learned a lot about myself. I got into a mode very much like my father's own mode of seeking - seeking solutions, seeking teachers, seeking information - to try to alleviate my own suffering.
Being in relationship with others helps us know ourselves better.
It is much easier to imitate something else that you know is accepted and loved than it is to look inside and follow your own compass, because you have no idea if you'll be accepted, if you'll be right, if your ideas are good, if your way is a path to success.
The tenets of Jeet Kune Do are simplicity, directness, and freedom, and it's meant to be a style that is efficient and non-telegraphic; you can't see it coming.
Being Bruce Lee's kid, everyone wants you to be an action-film star. I took martial arts, and it's fun to do those types of movies, but I wanted to act, not fight.
My father was an entertainer, and he knew what he was doing.
I think, when people hear the word 'philosophy,' they think of Plato and a bunch of people sitting around in their robes pontificating about life and how it should be. But really, somebody who is an active philosopher should not only be thinking of these things but putting them into practice.
I've had people hang around me because I'm Bruce Lee's daughter, and it's kind of a blow. You start to ask yourself, 'Who am I?', 'What's valuable about me?', 'Is what's valuable about me that I'm Bruce Lee's daughter?'
