Brandon Lee
Brandon Lee (1965 – 1993) was an American actor and martial artist, and son of the legendary Bruce Lee. He had worked his way up the acting ranks, starring in a number of television films and low-budget films during the 1980s, before landing a breakthrough role in the movie The Crow but had the misfortune of meeting an unusual and tragic end during the course of its filming.
Lee began his film career at age 20, starting off as a script reader, and doing uncredited cameo roles. In 1986, he got a role in the ABC television film Kung Fu: The Movie, as David Carradine’s son. He then moved to Hong Kong, where he acted and starred in a number of movies. In the late 80s and early 90s, he also acted in a number of B-movies in the US, until 1992, when he landed a starring role in The Crow, a film adaptation of a popular comic series.
Early in the morning of March 31, 1993, one of The Crow’s pivotal scenes, the killing of Lee’s character, Eric Draven, by street thugs, was staged in Wilmington, North Carolina. Lee was to enter through a door, carrying groceries, and was to be met by actor Michael Massee, in his role as Funboy, who would shoot him with a revolver loaded with blanks.
Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of the props and safety did a poor job that day and failed to adequately check Massee’s revolver. Had they done so, they would have discovered a fragment of a dummy bullet lodged in the barrel, left there from an earlier firing. They did not, however, and when Massee fired the revolver, the charge from the blank bullet propelled the fragment out of the barrel to strike Lee, fatally wounding him and cutting his budding career tragically short.