Jet Li

The Boy Who Didn't Want to Be a Bodyguard

Li Lianjie was born in Beijing on April 26, 1963. His father died when he was barely two years old, which plunged his family into extreme poverty. At eight, he entered the Beijing Wushu Academy purely by chance, since there was no room left in the summer school for traditional sports.

Hunger was his first trainer.

In 1974, he won his first national martial arts championship in China. He was part of a delegation that traveled to the United States to perform an exhibition for President Richard Nixon in the White House garden. Nixon asked him whether he would like to be his personal bodyguard when he grew up. Li replied that he didn't want to protect just one person, but his one billion Chinese compatriots.

That answer infuriated the secret services, but it made him a national hero before he turned twelve. He won five consecutive national championships between 1974 and 1979, competing against adults as a teenager. He retired from official competition at nineteen due to a serious knee injury that nearly left him disabled.

From the Shaolin Temple to the Underworld of Hong Kong

In 1982, he starred in Shaolin Temple. The film grossed 160 million yuan in China, with tickets costing just a few cents at the time. The success was so massive that thousands of young Chinese made pilgrimages to the royal monastery to try to learn kung fu. Li earned one yuan a day during filming.

But the film studio system in mainland China was rigid and salaries were miserable. So he decided to move to Hong Kong in search of better contracts and greater creative freedom. There he adopted the stage name Jet Li, because Western distributors considered his real name too difficult to pronounce.

His partnership with director Tsui Hark in 1991 changed the rules of martial arts cinema. With Once Upon a Time in China, he brought to life Wong Fei-hung, a historical figure that dozens of actors had already played. Li brought a technical elegance that blended acrobatic wushu with the use of invisible wires. The film saved the production company Golden Harvest from imminent technical bankruptcy.

The Hong Kong film industry was dangerous in the 1990s. His manager, Jim Choi, was shot to death at the door of his office in 1992 following a contract dispute. Li had to live under police protection for months while filming Fist of Legend in 1994.

And fear did not stop him.

The Hollywood Assault and His Spiritual Refuge

In 1998, he took on the villain role in Lethal Weapon 4 for purely strategic reasons. He did not speak English and had few lines, but his on-screen speed forced editors to slow down the footage because the camera could not capture his movements. He earned one million dollars for his first appearance in American cinema.

He starred in Romeo Must Die in 2000 and Hero in 2002. The latter was nominated for an Oscar and grossed more than $170 million worldwide. Despite big Hollywood paychecks, he always preferred projects that let him explore the philosophy of combat. In 2006, he released Fearless and announced it would be his last epic martial arts film.

The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean changed his life. He was on vacation in the Maldives with his family when water flooded the hotel, and he had to carry his daughter on his shoulders to save her. That near-death experience pushed him to found One Foundation in 2007 (a charity that asks for donations of just one yuan a month).

In 2010, doctors diagnosed him with hyperthyroidism. The illness and a heart condition forced him to drastically reduce his work pace and change his diet. The medications caused noticeable physical changes in his face, and for years false rumors circulated about a terminal health condition.

But he was alive and meditating.

In 2020, he played the Emperor in the live-action version of Mulan for Disney. His participation was a specific request from his daughters, and filming his scenes took only ten days on location in New Zealand. In 2024, he published his spiritual memoir Beyond Life and Death, in which he details his relationship with Tibetan Buddhism. The book has 400 pages in its original edition.