What was Bruce Lee really like? Friends of the Hong Kong legend – Robert Chua and Susan Ng – recall fond times with him, 47 years after his death
He was humble, friendly and loved to play jokes – these friends saw him away from the glamour of his Hollywood career that was cut short with his death aged 32 in 1973
This month marks the 47th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death. He died on July 20, 1973 at the age of 32.
Born in 1940, he would have been 80 years old this November. A lot has been written about the Hong Kong legend’s movies and martial arts but not so much about who he was as a person. We talked to two friends of Bruce Lee who shared their fond memories of the star.
Susan Ng, hairdresser and wife of actor Richard Ng Yiu-hon, says that Lee’s family and her husband’s family were long time friends.
“Richard’s mother and Lee’s mother [Grace Ho] were good friends and the children all played together when they lived on Hillwood Road,” says Ng. “My husband’s sister was friends with Bruce’s sister, and Bruce’s mother was Richard’s sister’s godmother, so they were close, they all grew up together.”
“The first time I met him was at a family dinner,” says Ng who met the star when he returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s. “He had just arrived in Hong Kong and Linda [Bruce’s wife] was a quiet person and so was Bruce at that time. To me, Bruce was an ordinary guy,” says Ng who trained under Vidal Sasson in London and stayed friends with the iconic hairstylist throughout his lifetime too. Her salon, Hair by Susan, was on Prince Edward Road at that time and Lee became a regular.
“It was very soon after this first meeting that I started to cut Bruce’s hair. He would tell me to ‘remember continuity’, but I was never on the set and I was very busy with other clients,” she says. “One time Bruce said, ‘Make me look like a peasant’, so l cut his hair really short. To me that was a wonderful look. Then when he went to Rome to shoot his film Way of the Dragon, I created a longer style for him which was different for that time. It started a trend and people tried to copy it.”
“Bruce lived in Kowloon Tong close by my salon, and often while out jogging he would run into the salon and spar with the juniors working with me. This they loved, naturally.”
“Bruce used to drive a sports car. He spoke several times of when he went out people would confront him wanting to be the one who floored Bruce Lee. He ignored them but if they kept on provoking he would say, ‘OK, come on, let’s do it.’ They would then back down. One time, I was in my car near his home. I had picked my daughter up from the nearby kindergarten and he was backing out of his driveway in his sports car. I hooted my horn a lot for a joke. He turned his head slowly round in my direction with the look on his face like ‘are you looking for trouble’ but when he saw it was me, he gave me a wonderful smile.”