Archive Photos via Getty Images Bruce Lee in 1973's "Enter The Dragon."

“I was in my 20s at the time. Never had there been an Asian man that was as respected and admired by everyone in this country,” Kwong, 64, told HuffPost. “What made Bruce especially impactful was his timing. There simply was no one like him ever before.” Lee remains the preeminent model of Asian manhood: A few years back, the The Asian American Man Study asked, “Who is the Asian American man you most admire and why?” Bruce Lee was the person the 497 respondents mentioned most often. (Depressingly, the actual most common response was, “I don’t know,” a sad commentary on the invisibility of Asians in film and any other highly public fields.) “Lee pioneered a model that promised Asian men they could take on any enemy and come out on top,” said Chris Berry, a professor of film studies at King’s College in London. “In his early films, before he was trying to pander to the wider U.S. audience, there was always a racial hierarchy of opponents, starting with other East Asian men, and ending up with Caucasian men,” he said. “It made his films wildly popular throughout in Third World countries and also with African American audiences.” Lee was the rare nonwhite leading man and his films leaned into revenge fantasies and sticking up for yourself, much like the Blaxploitation movies of the era. How Lee Changed Hollywood Surprisingly, though, the actor only completed five feature films before he died in 1973. But in that short time span, he singlehandedly flipped the script on how we perceive Asian masculinity. He was fighting against a lot: In films prior to the 1970s, Asian male characters were characterized in two ways: As cultural studies professor Chiung Hwang Chen wrote in a 1996 academic paper, Asians were portrayed as the “threatening masculine ‘yellow peril’” who fought to “kill the white man and take his women.” (That last line is exactly what the title character orders his army to do in 1932’s “The Mask of Fu Manchu.”) In other movies, they were feminized and emasculated, the professor said. Often, these characters were portrayed by white actors in yellowface. (There were blips of positive representation, but they were few and far between: Brooding Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa was a silent era heartthrob, and James Shigeta lent his leading man good looks to films in the 1960s.)

Sunset Boulevard via Getty Images American martial artist Chuck Norris with Chinese American martial artist, actor, director and screenwriter Bruce Lee on the set of his movie "The Way of the Dragon."

Lee refused to be a blip. He took a supporting role in TV’s “Green Hornet,” but movie parts were hard to come by. To make a name for himself, he had to leave Hollywood and work twice as hard. Lee headed to Hong Kong to take on lead roles and make a living. While there, Warner Brothers kept an eye on his career moves, and offered to help him produce “Enter the Dragon,” his last feature film. In “Enter the Dragon” as with all of his films, it’s impossible to ignore Lee’s physicality. He wasn’t just a lead actor, he was a veritable, shirtless, sweaty sex symbol. Early film martial artists like Kwan Tak Hing took down enemies fully clothed in flowing robes, but Lee showed off his body, a move that Berry said was likely inspired by the sword-and-sandal flicks of the 1950s starring people like Charlton Heston. “In theory, martial arts are all about skill and not about physical strength. The body was not important, and it was not displayed,” the film historian said. “With Bruce, the body and its muscles are displayed as weapons. You always know when Bruce is really angry and means business, because that’s when his shirt comes off.”

Sunset Boulevard via Getty Images A shirtless Lee on the set of "Tang Shan Da Xiong" ("Big Boss"), written and directed by Wei Lo.

Off-screen, he favored low V-neck shirts, brightly colored, well-tailored suits and oversized sunglasses. Just like anything else in his life, his wild street style showed he was a man who lived boldly and wanted to stand out. Lee’s Influential Philosophy About Work Ethic It wasn’t just Lee’s physical prowess or style that endeared him to fans; his spiritualism and philosophical teachings pack a punch, too. “For me, it was Bruce’s philosophy that drew me in,” said Osric Chau, a 32-year-old actor and martial artist. “That confidence that magnetizes you and made me consider that maybe I could be that self-assured of myself someday.” “Be like water,” Lee famously said. Water stays true to its nature, but thoroughly adapts to its environment, much like Lee navigating both the Hollywood and the Hong Kong film industries. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times,” he said, a popular quote that speaks to Lee’s utter mastery of his patented style of Jeet Kune Do. Those words have sticking power. If you were an Asian kid on the playground who was taunted with lazy “Bruce Lee” or “Jackie Chan” name-calling (or worse, hokey “Karate Kid” crane kicks), the physical comparison may have been dicey at best. But the philosophies, you could lean into. Lee reminded you to keep your head high.

He said very pointedly that he had already made up his mind that he was going to show people a real Asian man on-screen. He knew representation was lacking. Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter