Bruce lee Biography

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Actor, martial arts expert. Born Lee Jun Fan, on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. His father, a Hong Kong opera singer, moved with his wife and three children to the United States in 1939; his fourth child, a son, was born while he was on tour in San Francisco. Lee’s mother called him “Bruce,” which means “strong one” in Gaelic. Young Bruce appeared in his first film at the age of three months, when he served as the stand-in for an American baby in Golden Gate Girl.

In 1941, the Lees moved back to Hong Kong, then occupied by the Japanese. Apparently a natural in front of the camera, Bruce Lee appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor, beginning in 1946. He also studied dance, once winning a cha-cha competition. As a teenager, he became a member of a Hong Kong street gang, and in 1953 began studying kung fu to sharpen his fighting skills. In 1959, after Lee got into trouble with the police for fighting, his mother sent him back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington.

Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery, whom he married in 1964. By that time, Lee had opened his own martial arts school in Seattle. He and Linda soon moved to California, where Lee opened two more schools in Los Angeles and Oakland. At his schools, Lee taught mostly a style he called Jeet Kune Do.

Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired from 1966 to 1967. In the show, which was based on a 1930s radio program, the small, wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornet’s loyal sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while his most notable role came in the 1969 film Marlowe, starring James Garner. Confronted with the dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding actors of Asian heritage, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in 1971, with his wife and two children (Brandon, born in 1965, and Shannon, born in 1967).

Back in the city where he had grown up, Lee signed a two-film contract. Fists of Fury (its U.S. title) was released in late 1971, featuring Lee as a vengeful fighter chasing the villains who had killed his kung-fu master. Combining his smooth Jeet Kune Do athleticism with the high-energy theatrics of his performance in The Green Hornet, Lee was the charismatic center of the film, which set new box office records in Hong Kong. Those records were broken by Lee’s next film, The Chinese Connection (1972), which, like Fists of Fury, received poor reviews from critics when they were released in the U.S.

By the end of 1972, Lee was a major movie star in Asia. He had founded his own production company, Concord Pictures, and had released his first directorial feature, Way of the Dragon. Though he had not yet gained stardom in America, he was poised on the brink with his second directorial feature and first major Hollywood project, Enter the Dragon.

On July 20, 1973, just one month before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong at the age of 32. The official cause of his sudden and utterly unexpected death was a brain edema, found in an autopsy to have been caused by a strange reaction to a prescription painkiller he was reportedly taking for a back injury. Controversy surrounded Lee’s death from the beginning, as some claimed he had been murdered. He was also widely believed to have been cursed, a conclusion driven by Lee’s obsession with his own early death. (The tragedy of the so-called curse was compounded in 1993, when Brandon Lee was killed under similarly mysterious circumstances during the filming of The Crow. The 28-year-old actor was fatally shot with a gun that supposedly contained blanks but somehow had a live round lodged deep within its barrel.)

With the posthumous release of Enter the Dragon, Lee’s status as a film icon was confirmed. The film went on to gross a total of over $200 million, and Lee’s legacy created a whole new breed of action hero—a mold filled with varying degrees of success by such actors as Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Jackie Chan.

Bruce Lee - Deathaversary web site for Bruce Lee Timeline and more about this legendary martial artist.

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Jacky chan Biography

Actor, director, producer. Born April 7, 1954, in Hong Kong, China. When his parents moved to Australia to find new jobs, the seven-year-old Chan was left behind to study at the Chinese Opera Research Institute, a Hong Kong boarding school. For the next 10 years, Chan studied martial arts, drama, acrobatics, and singing, and was subjected to stringent discipline, including corporal punishment for poor performance. He appeared in his first film, the Cantonese feature Big and Little Wong Tin Bar (1962), when he was only eight, and went on to appear in a number of musical films.

Upon his graduation in 1971, Chan found work as an acrobat and a movie stuntman, most notably in Fist of Fury (1972), starring Hong Kong’s resident big-screen superstar, Bruce Lee. For that film, he reportedly completed the highest fall in the history of the Chinese film industry, earning the respectful notice of the formidable Lee, among others.

After Lee’s tragic, unexpected death in 1973, Chan was singled out as a likely successor of his mantle as the king of Hong Kong cinema. To that end, he starred in a string of kung fu movies with Lo Wei, a producer and director who had worked with Lee. Most were unsuccessful, and the collaboration ended in the late 1970s. By that time, Chan had decided that he wanted to break out of the Lee mold and create his own image. Blending his martial arts abilities with an impressive nerve—he insisted on performing all of his own stunts—and a sense of screwball physical comedy reminiscent of one of his idols, Buster Keaton, Chan found his own formula for cinematic gold.

A year after the release of his first bona fide hit, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), Chan took the Hong Kong film world by storm with his first so-called “kung fu comedy,” the now-classic Drunken Master (1978). Subsequent hits such as The Fearless Hyena (1979), Half a Loaf of Kung Fu (1980), and The Young Master (1980) confirmed Chan’s star status; the latter film marked his first with Golden Harvest, Lee’s old production company and the leading film studio in Hong Kong. Before long, Chan had become the highest-paid actor in Hong Kong and a huge international star throughout Asia. He exerted total control over most of his films, often taking charge of duties ranging from producing to directing to performing the theme songs.

In the early 1980s, Chan tried his luck in Hollywood, with little success. He starred in the Golden Harvest-produced The Big Brawl (1980), which flopped; he also had a small supporting role opposite Burt Reynolds in the disappointing ensemble comedy Cannonball Run (1982) and its equally mediocre 1984 sequel.

Back in Hong Kong, Chan’s star only rose throughout the 1980s, as he produced impressive action-comedies such as Project A (1983), Police Story (1985), and Armor of God (1986), and the hit period film Mr. Canton and Lady Rose (1989), a clever remake of Frank Capra’s 1961 film A Pocketful of Miracles. By that time, however, Chan was far more than a movie star—he was a one-man film industry. In 1986, he formed his own production company, Golden Way. He also founded a modeling/casting agency, Jackie’s Angels, in order to recruit talent for his films. During the filming of Police Story, so many stuntmen were injured that none would agree to work with Chan again; in response, he founded the Jackie Chan Stuntmen Association, whose members he trained personally and paid their medical bills. For his part, Chan claims to have broken every bone in his body at least once while performing stunts. In 1986, during the filming of Armor of God, he fractured his skull after falling over 40 feet while attempting to jump from the top of a building and land on a tree branch below.

In the early 1990s, Chan broadened his range even more, turning in a rare dramatic performance in the melodramatic Crime Story (1993). He also made several sequels to his hits Police Story and Drunken Master. As one of the biggest international box office stars, his popularity in America was limited to the savviest filmgoers. Chan’s profile began a meteoric rise in the mid-1990s, however, when a series of events combined to bring him to the attention of a wider American audience.

In 1995, Chan created his own comic book character, the central figure in Jackie Chan’s Spartan X, a series that hit newsstands in both Asia and the U.S. That same year, newly anointed directing sensation Quentin Tarantino, fresh off the success of Pulp Fiction (1994), presented Chan with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the MTV Movie Awards (the admiring Tarantino reportedly threatened to boycott the ceremony if Chan did not receive the award). In 1996, New Line Cinema and Golden Harvest jointly released Rumble in the Bronx, Chan’s fifth English-language (dubbed) release but his first hit in America. The film grossed $10 million in its first weekend of release, shooting to No. 1 at the box office; its success prompted the American debut of two previous Chan films, Crime Story and Drunken Master II.

After two less successful efforts, Jackie Chan’s First Strike (1997) and Mr. Nice Guy (1998), Chan had another big box-office hit with Rush Hour (also 1998), an American-produced action-comedy. In Rush Hour, Chan employed his English-language skills as a Chinese police officer on an exchange program in the U.S. who is partnered with a streetwise Los Angeles cop, played by the rising comedian Chris Tucker. In 2000, Chan starred in Shanghai Noon, another crossover comedy-action film set in the Old West and co-starring Owen Wilson and Lucy Liu.

The following summer, Chan reteamed with Tucker for the smash hit sequel Rush Hour 2, for which the action star earned a hefty $15 million plus a percentage of the record-breaking box-office haul. In 2002, Chan costarred with Jennifer Love Hewitt in The Tuxedo, an action comedy about a taxi driver who receives special powers when he puts on his boss's tux. That same year, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was honored with the Taurus Award for best action movie star at the World Stunt Awards. Other recent films include Shanghai Knights, New Police Story and The Myth.

Chan is a noted philanthropist whose causes include conservation, animal treatment and disaster relief. In 2006, Chan announced that he would donate half of his assets to charity when he dies.

Chan has one son, J.C., with his estranged wife, the Taiwanese actress Lin Feng-Chiao.

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Source:www.biography.com

Jet li Biography

Martial artist, actor. Jet Li Lian Jie was born on April 26, 1963 in Heibei, on the outskirts of Beijing, China. His father died when he was two.

At a young age, Jet Li developed an interest in wushu, the dominant martial art in Mainland China, and enrolled at the Beijing Wushu academy at age eight. He won five gold medals in the Chinese championships, his first when he was only 11 and even performed in front of U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House as part of a cultural exchange during the 1970's.

After retiring at age 17, Jet Li went on to win great acclaim in China as an actor. He was 19 when he appeared in his first film, Shaolin Temple, the first modern kung fu movie made in China.

After his success in Hong Kong, and establishing a cult following in the U.S., Jet Li established a presence in American films. His first English-speaking role was as a villain in Lethal Weapon 4. His first leading role in a Hollywood movie was the highly acclaimed Romeo Must Die, for which he suffered bruised ribs while filming the fight stunts with Anthony Anderson. In 2006, he released his last wushu epic, Fearless.

Li and Jackie Chan are currently filming The Forbidden Kingdom. Based on the legend of the Monkey King from the Chinese folk novel Journey to the West, it is due out in Apirl 2008.

In 1987, Jet Li married Beijing Wushu Team member Huang Quiyan. They had two children and divorced in 1990.

Li married Nina Li Chi in 1999, a Hong-Kong based actress. He has two children with her as well.

Jet Li was on vacation in the Maldives when the tsunami hit during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. At the time, it was widely reported that he had died during the disaster. However, he only suffered a minor foot injury, caused by a piece of floating furniture, while guiding his four-year-old daughter to safety.

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paris hilton's biography

Model/actress/socialite Paris Whitney Hilton was born February 17, 1981, in New York City. Thanks to her great-grandfather Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton hotel chain, Paris is the shared heir to a family fortune estimated at $300 million. The daughter of Rick and Kathy Hilton, Paris grew up alongside her younger sister, Nicky, and two brothers, Baron and Conrad, in their homes in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria, Beverly Hills and The Hamptons.

After graduating from high school, Paris pursued a modeling career, appearing in such national publications as GQ and Vanity Fair and on runways for various New York designers. She soon became a well-known jetsetter, courting media attention for her outrageous lifestyle. Whether it was a short-lived romance with Leonardo DiCaprio or boxer Oscar de la Hoya or a rude remark in a public bathroom during a night of partying with her sister, Paris frequently received bad press for her socialite antics. A notorious sex tape starring Paris and her ex Rick Solomon, which was released on the Internet, didn’t help matters.

In 2001, perhaps in an effort to clean up her reputation, she turned from modeling to acting, appearing in Ben Stiller’s spoof Zoolander, an adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic The Cat in the Hat and 2004’s Raising Helen with Kate Hudson. But it was her turn as herself in the 2003 Fox reality show The Simple Life that earned her the most publicity. Starring Paris and her best gal pal Nicole Richie (daughter of legendary pop icon Lionel), the show followed the girls on their misadventures while trying to get along on a working farm. The show was such a hit, that Fox followed it up the next year with The Simple Life 2: Road Trip.

In May 2005, Hilton announced her engagement to Greek shipping heir Paris Latsis. The couple called off the nutpials in October. She has also been romantically linked to Greek shipping fortune heir Stavros Niarchos III and actor Josh Henderson.

The latest installment of Hilton's reality series, The Simple Life Goes to Camp, premiered in 2007. But her return to television was overshadowed by her legal problems. Arrested in September 2006 for driving under the influence, she had received probation for that offense. But she then was caught in February 2007 driving with a suspended license and charged with violating her terms of her probation. In May she was sentenced to 45 days in jail. This was later reduced to 23 days. Hilton reported to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, on the night of June 3. Earlier that evening, she had appeared at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards.

After serving only three full days in prison, Hilton was released early in the morning on June 7. She was reportedly released early for health reasons. To finish her sentence, Hilton ordered to spend 40 days in home confinement.

© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

Source:www.biography.com