Jet Li

Jet Li, 李連杰 Gwohngdongwa pengyam: Ley5 Lin4 Git6 pinyin Li3 lian2 jie2, (born April 26 1963) is a martial artist and actor.

He won the Chinese Wushu national championship five times, which eventually lead to a career as a martial arts movie star, first in mainland China, then in Hong Kong and now in Hollywood. He has made many movies in Hong Kong over the years. His début in Hollywood was in Lethal Weapon 4 as a villain. His first leading role in a Hollywood movie was in Romeo must die. After that came Kiss of the dragon, The One premièred in North America on November 2, 2001, and his latest movie Cradle 2 the Grave premièred in North America on February 28, 2003.

Some of the more famous of his Chinese language films include: the Shaolin Temple series (1, 2 and 3) - the films that introduced him; the Once Upon a Time in China series (Chinese title: Wong Fei Hung), about the semi-legendary Chinese folk hero; Fist of Legend, which was essentially a remake of Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and the Fong Sai Yuk films, about another Chinese folk hero. He is very athleticly coordinated and most of the stunts performed is his movies are performed by hiself.

Jet Li starred in 1995's 鼠膽龍威 (shu3dan3 long2wei4, literally, "Courage of a Mouse and Power of a Dragon"). The movie, known in the US as either High risk or Meltdown, portrays Jet Li as a cop who has had his son murdered by crimelords and was thus bent on revenge. Along the way, he pairs up with wacky sell-out actor Frankie (played by Jacky Cheung), and proceeds to engage in massively violent battles in a high-rise building. Note the fact that such a "no-talent" kung-fu actor was played by a man whose name rings close to that of Jackie Chan's was entirely intentional. While the movie was a stunning action comedic success, Jackie Chan remains angered to this day about what he considers to be a "parody" of his talents.