Early life & career as athlete

Li was born Li Lianjie in Beijing, China. His father died when he was two. Li participated in the sport of wushu in the non-sparring event. He began his wushu on the Beijing Wushu Team, an athletic group organized to perform martial arts forms during the All China Games. As a member of the team, he received wushu training and went on to win fifteen gold medals and one silver medal in Chinese wushu championships:

1974 — Youth National Athletic Hi Competition: broadsword form gold medal, optional empty-hand form gold medal, all-round gold medal;
1975 — Third Chinese Wushu Championships: long fist form gold medal, spear form silver medal
1977 — National Wushu Competition: long-fist form gold medal, broadsword form gold medal
1978 — National Wushu Competition: long-fist form gold medal, optional empty-hand form gold medal, broadsword form gold medal, all-round gold medal;
1979 — Fourth Chinese Wushu Championships: long-fist form gold medal, optional empty-hand form gold medal, broadsword form gold medal, sparring form gold medal, all-round gold medal.

Chinese films

Jet Li`s hand print and autograph at the Avenue of Stars in Hong KongThe fame gained by his sports winnings led to a career as a martial arts film star, beginning in mainland China and then continuing into Hong Kong. Li acquired his screen name in 1982 in the Philippines when a publicity company thought his real name was too hard to pronounce. They likened his career to an aircraft, which likewise "takes-off" as quickly, so they placed the name Jet Li to the movie posters. Soon everybody was calling him by this new name, which was also based on the nickname, "Jet," given to him as a young student, due to his speed and grace when training with the Beijing Wushu team. He made his debut with the 1982 film Shaolin Temple. Some of his more famous Chinese films include:

The Shaolin Temple series (1, 2 and 3), which are considered to be the films which sparked the rebirth of the real Shaolin Temple in Dengfeng, China;
The Once Upon a Time in China series (Chinese title: Wong Fei Hung), about the legendary Chinese folk hero Master Wong Fei Hung.
Fist of Legend (Chinese title: Jing Wu Ying Xiong), a remake of Bruce Lee`s Chinese Connection (Jing Wu Men in Chinese, named after the martial arts school);
The Fong Sai-Yuk films Fong Sai-Yuk and Fong Sai-Yuk II (1993), about another Chinese folk hero.
Li starred in the 1995 film, Shu dan long wei, known in English as "Courage of a Mouse and Power of a Dragon". The film, known in the US as either High Risk or Meltdown, portrays Jet Li as a cop who becomes disillusioned after his wife is murdered by crime lords. Along the way, he pairs up with a wacky sell-out actor, Frankie (played by Jacky Cheung), and proceeds to engage in a series of violent battles in a high-rise building. The setting is similar to that of Die Hard (which similarly, is known in China as Hu Dan Long Wei, or "Courage of a tiger and power of a dragon"). This movie is notable in that director Wong Jing had such a terrible experience working with Jackie Chan in Jing`s previous film City Hunter that he chose to make Cheung`s character a biting satire of Chan. Jet Li would later publicly apologize to Chan for taking part in it.


American films

In 1998, he made his American film debut in Lethal Weapon 4 which also marked the first time he had ever played a villain in

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