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(CNN)Bruce Lee was preparation a friend 1 24-hour interval when he did something unexpected.

The star of the classic pic, "Enter the Dragon," was already known for his fanatical fitness regimen. He didn't fume or drink; he gobbled vitamin supplements and drank raw blended hamburger meat. He'd transformed himself into a lithe fighter who could do 2-finger push button-ups and send burly men flying with his famed one-inch punch.

But Lee ended the training session at his abode on this particular day with a different type of flourish. He lit a joint and started puffing away. Information technology came from a box of marijuana cigarettes he kept in his garage. Lee would later move on to hashish, conveying it around in picayune bags and nibbling on it like edibles.

"It raises the consciousness level," Lee explained when some other martial creative person asked him why he got high.

That's non the type of story ane typically hears most Lee. Since he died at age 32, his legend has grown to such mythological levels that one martial artist calls him "kung fu Jesus." A new biography, though, debunks some of the near pop myths about the man.

"Bruce Lee: A Life" by Matthew Polly is the first in-depth account of Lee'due south journey from a street-brawling teenager to a global icon. The book, which comes on the 45th anniversary of Lee'southward death, features interviews from everyone from his childhood classmates to friends who saw him smoke up to the woman who last saw him alive. Lee'due south charisma, ambition and relentless appetite for combat leap off the pages. You tin can practically hear his catlike shrieks in some of the nearly bright sections.

If you recall yous know Lee, this volume may stupor you lot.

Amongst its surprises:

- Lee was a "kinetic genius" who could quickly chief whatsoever martial arts fighting style. But he never learned to ride a bicycle and was alleged medically unfit for the draft subsequently declining his physical.

- He has been portrayed as an impoverished immigrant who came to America to make it large, but he actually grew upwards in an affluent Hong Kong family with its own chauffer and two live-in maids.

- He is seen as a Chinese superhero with a statue in Hong Kong, but he was also part Jewish.

Polly, who interviewed at least 100 of Lee'due south friends and family members, says people often forget that Lee was virtually unknown in the Usa when he died. His breakthrough movie, "Enter the Dragon," was released less than a month afterward his mysterious decease in Hong Kong in July 1973.

Lee is the but major Western icon whose fame is entirely posthumous, says Polly, who, as a skinny, bullied kid, was inspired by Lee'southward films to later move to China and study kung fu at a Shaolin temple.

Lee wasn't but an entertainer; he was an evangelist. Millions took upwards martial arts because of him, Polly says.

"No other glory changed people's lives in that mode," Polly says. "Nobody watched a Steve McQueen flick and took upward something. People report martial arts because of Lee, and it changed their lives for the ameliorate. Bruce Lee has a place in a lot of fans' hearts as a demigod, or what I call a patron saint of kung fu. He had a missionary effect. "

He never apologized for beingness Asian

He also inverse the style many Westerners regarded Asians, Polly'south book shows.

Lee was the "the first Asian American actor to embody the classic Hollywood definition of a star," Polly wrote. "Men wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him."

Lee'due south pride in his heritage was contagious.

"More than anything else, what I liked most nearly Bruce was that he never apologized for beingness Oriental," says one of Lee's higher girlfriends, a Japanese-American, in the volume. "In a time when so many Asians were trying to convince themselves they were white, Bruce was so proud to be Chinese he was busting with it."

Asian men were non traditionally depicted as sexual beings in Western films. Even Lee had simply one brief love scene in the three movies he made. Away from the screen, though, Lee was a ladies' man.

Lee was married with two kids merely was caught up in the "Swinging Sixties free love ethos" and had extramarital diplomacy, Polly writes. There's one passage in the book where a former mistress of Lee's raves well-nigh how "knowledgeable" he was about a woman'southward body.

The book besides offers a peek into the Hollywood culture of the late 1960s and early on '70s, with intimate accounts of Lee's friendships with stars similar McQueen and James Coburn and the writer Stirling Silliphant. There's a wonderful scene where Lee uses a martial arts lesson with Silliphant to unlock the author'due south repressed feelings most his begetter.

Information technology turns out Lee was a bit of a hippie, also. At one time, he wore his pilus long, sported love beads and donned dashikis. And he got high, which surprised some of the martial artists who trained with him. I judo expert quoted in the volume stopped training with Lee at his dwelling house because he was sick of all the pot fume swirling effectually.

Polly says he wasn't trying to exist salacious. He wanted to testify another side of Lee beyond the "patron saint of kung fu" epitome. He interviewed Lee's widow and daughter for the volume but hasn't heard from them since information technology published last calendar month. Neither responded to CNN'southward asking for annotate.

"I promise one solar day that they will see it as it is," Polly says. "It was written from a place of love."

Davis Miller, author of "The Tao of Bruce Lee," says "fan-boys" won't love Polly's book.

"Those guys need to believe in kung fu Jesus," says Miller, whom Polly consulted for his bio. "And they're non getting that. They're getting a guy who is human."

Taking out Sammy Davis Jr.'s bodyguard

Lee, indeed, seemed superhuman in his film's fight scenes. But how skillful was he when the cameras weren't rolling? People even so argue that question.

Miller says Lee was probably the "all-time martial artist at the time of his death" merely wasn't unbeatable. Though Lee trained with and taught martial arts champions like Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis, Miller says he's non sure how Lee would accept fared in a fight against a elevation-flight boxer.

"I don't think the guy was ever tested," Miller says. "Bruce Lee didn't have the real-world experience that boxers had."

1 man who saw Lee fight has no doubtfulness about what he could do.

Doug Palmer was one of Lee's first students in America. He is one of a pocket-size grouping who trained with and learned directly from Lee. Palmer, who appears in Polly's book, met Lee when the martial artist was 20 and knew him until his untimely expiry. At ane indicate, Lee fifty-fifty moved in with Palmer's family unit.

"He had no compunction, no hesitation most testing himself confronting the biggest, the fastest, and the all-time in any he came across," Palmer, at present an chaser in Seattle, told CNN.

Lee didn't take many street fights as an adult because he quickly showed would-be aggressors they didn't stand a take a chance, says Palmer who is writing a memoir entitled, "Bruce Lee: Sifu, Friend and Big Brother."

"Most challenges he could handle without a fight," Palmer says. "The mode that he could necktie somebody upward or hit them at will or deflect their punches at volition -- it was very clear. Very few people would push that."

Polly says everybody he talked to who saw Lee spar or fight rendered the same verdict: He was "very, very, very good.''

Polly listed the reasons why: Lee was a "genius at torso move" who could main any martial arts style. He could read his opponents and know when and how they were going to assail, seemingly before they fifty-fifty moved. And he had otherworldly quickness; Polly says Lee's body was like "one giant fast-twitch musculus."

"He fought a lot. He liked to fight. It made him happy," Polly says.

Lee would often greet other martial artists and street brawlers with the aforementioned invitation: "Hit me as hard every bit you can with either hand whenever yous are ready," Polly writes. He would and so brush abroad their punches "as hands as you would a babe" and counter with strikes that would end inches away from their target.

Sometimes Lee didn't hold dorsum. When a Japanese karate expert challenged him, Lee knocked the man out in eleven seconds. But Lee didn't always boss. Polly tells a mannerly story of Lee lightly sparring with his first master, the legendary Ip Homo, who past that time was elderly but could more than than hold his own.

Polly tells another story near Lee taking out a "humongous" bodyguard of Sammy Davis Jr. Lee was accompanying 2 friends during his days every bit a struggling actor when the trio ran into the bodyguard near a Las Vegas casino. The man of a sudden raised his paw to wave at someone behind Lee, but Lee thought the bodyguard was about to attack him.

Quicker than a blink, Lee kicked out one of the bodyguard's legs, locked up his artillery, bent him backwards until he was helpless, "and went right at his throat with the points of his fingers," Polly writes. The story ended with Lee's apology and the bodyguard asking, "What the hell did you do to me?"

How Lee really died

One of the most intriguing sections of Polly's book deals with Lee'due south death.

The conventional explanation is that Lee died from a cerebral edema, or swelling of the encephalon, acquired by a reaction to a painkiller he had taken for a headache. But all sorts of conspiracy theories well-nigh his death abound, amongst them: Lee was felled past a family curse or taken out past the Chinese mafia.

Polly offers a more prosaic explanation: heatstroke.

He says it'due south common for heatstroke victims to endure from swelling of the brain. Lee had several risk factors for heatstroke: He had collapsed 3 months earlier after isolating himself in a hot editing room without air conditioning; he'd had his armpit sweat glands removed because he disliked sweat stains on his clothes; and the impending release of "Enter the Dragon" kept him from sleeping and eating.

Fifty-fifty supremely conditioned young athletes die of heatstroke, Polly points out. He cites Korey Stringer, a Minnesota Vikings NFL player who died of heatstroke at a training camp in 2001. Lee died on one of the hottest days in Hong Kong, Polly notes.

"He's in perfect shape. All he does is piece of work out," Polly says. "But if you haven't been sleeping, if you've lost a bunch of weight, if yous remove the sweat glands nether the armpits, and then yous're less probable to deal with oestrus than you would have beforehand. Even a salubrious man tin can dice in those conditions."

Lee was on the cusp of international fame when he died. He was negotiating the creation of an animated series and a wear line, and movie studio offers were tumbling in because of buzz over "Enter the Dragon." He had fifty-fifty been booked to announced on "The This night Evidence" with Johnny Carson.

"He knew he was going to be a superstar, and he was getting gear up for it," Polly says.

Today, he'southward become something else -- a global icon who is arguably one of the nearly recognizable men on the planet. There probably isn't any country in the world where some young man or woman doesn't have a affiche of Bruce Lee on a chamber wall.

Who could have predicted Lee's posthumous fame? Long earlier he establish Hollywood, only Lee seemed to sense what might be in store. When he was 21 -- and fighting loneliness and racism afterwards coming to America -- Lee wrote a letter to his former high school sweetheart.

"I feel I take this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision," he wrote. "Information technology is all of these combined."

Lee doesn't come up off every bit perfect in Polly'southward book; he'south no kung fu Jesus who never lost a fight. But later 45 years of steadily turning him into a superhuman figure, perhaps people are ready for Lee to become something else:

An extraordinary swain who still inspires millions despite his share of human being weakness.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/07/us/bruce-lee-myth-vs-reality/index.html

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