Director Ang Lee formed 32-year-old Mason Lee to play Bruce Lee successful a play astir the famed actor's beingness and quality to "impossible dreams into reality."
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When it came to uncovering the prima for his Bruce Lee biopic, Ang Lee decided to support it successful the family.
The Oscar-winning director cast his 32-year-old lad Mason Lee to play the late martial arts expert, marking the third time Mason volition look successful a feature movie directed by his father. The movie—eponymously titled Bruce Lee—is presently successful development, with Dan Futterman attached to the task arsenic a screenwriter.
Ang noted that the play volition halfway astir the individuality and vocation of Bruce—known for films such as Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon—who is highly regarded arsenic the popular civilization icon that helped popularize martial arts in late 1960s and aboriginal 1970s.
"Accepted arsenic neither afloat American nor Fully Chinese, Bruce Lee was a span betwixt East and West who introduced Chinese Gung Fu to the world, a idiosyncratic of combat and an iconic performing creator who revolutionized some the martial arts and enactment cinema," Ang said successful a Nov. 30 property release. "I consciousness compelled to archer the communicative of this brilliant, unsocial quality being who yearned for belonging, possessed tremendous powerfulness successful a 135-pound-frame, and who, done tireless hard work, made intolerable dreams into reality."
This isn't the archetypal clip Ang volition squad up with his son, whose first foray into acting began arsenic a toddler successful his father's 1993 movie The Wedding Banquet. Mason has since gone connected to look in The Hangover Part II, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (directed by Ang) and Taiwanese romcom Stand by Me.
Reflecting connected the maturation of his career, helium told the South China Morning Post in 2021 however his begetter initially felt astir him becoming an actor.
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"He thought doing specified a vocation is harsh, arsenic movie unit person to beryllium distant from [their] families for agelong stretches of time," Mason said astatine the time. "He didn't privation his children to person specified a life. But helium yet supported me. After seeing my films, helium volition beryllium frank with me, praising the bully performances and damning the atrocious ones. I look guardant to moving with him connected acceptable again."
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