Jet Li Lianjie (courtesy name Yangzhong; born 26 April 1963) is a martial artist, actor, and philanthropist. With a career spanning more than forty years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential martial artists in cinema history. Li's early work in mainland China during the 1980s is credited with introducing the Shaolin Temple to a global audience. During the 1990s, his collaborations with filmmaker Tsui Hark spearheaded wushu representation in Hong Kong action cinema, establishing him as its most prominent practitioner. He simultaneously popularised the wuxia genre before transitioning to Hollywood in the late 1990s. His crossover success brought global recognition, solidifying his place alongside Jackie Chan as one of the two biggest names in contemporary martial arts cinema.
Li began his career as a competitive martial artist. Trained as a wushu athlete at the Beijing Shichahai Sports School, he won multiple national championships with the Beijing Wushu Team from 1974 to 1979 under the guidance of coach Wu Bin. After retiring from competitive wushu in 1979, he made his feature film debut in Shaolin Temple (1982), a runaway success followed by two sequels (1984 and 1986). Li established himself as a leading Asian action star by portraying folk hero Wong Fei-hung in director Tsui Hark's critically acclaimed Once Upon a Time in China series (1991–1993). Following his directorial debut with Born to Defence (1988), he anchored a string of other highly successful 1990s projects; these included the wuxia epics Swordsman II (1992) and Fong Sai-yuk (1993), followed by the martial arts films Tai Chi Master (1993) and Fist of Legend (1994). He then successfully reinvented his screen image with a series of popular gun fu action films, including High Risk (1995), Black Mask (1996), and Hitman (1998).
Li made his Hollywood transition as the antagonist in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), leading to a prolific international career featuring starring roles in Romeo Must Die (2000) and the Luc Besson-produced films Kiss of the Dragon (2001) and Unleashed (2005). He returned to Asian cinema for Zhang Yimou's Academy Award-nominated Hero (2002) and Fearless (2006), followed by The Warlords (2007), which earned him the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor. In 2008, he starred in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and joined fellow martial arts star Jackie Chan in The Forbidden Kingdom, which marked their landmark first on-screen collaboration. He teamed up with Jason Statham in five films: The One (2001), War (2007), and the first three installments of
The Expendables (2010–2014). He then made a high-profile return to the screen in Yuen Woo-ping's 2026 epic Blades of the Guardians, which became the highest-grossing wuxia film of all time worldwide.
As a philanthropist, Li founded One Foundation in 2007, which was registered in 2011 as the first private charitable fundraising organization in China. He also co-founded Taiji Zen, an online health program providing instruction in meditation and tai chi. Li topped Forbes's list of China's richest stars in 2004. He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in 2010.
Early life and martial arts career
Li was born in Beijing, and was the youngest of two boys and two girls. His ancestral home is in Shenyang, Liaoning. When he was two years old, his father died and his family then lived in poverty.
Li was eight when his talent for wushu was noticed as he practiced at a school summer course at the Beijing Sports and Exercise School (now known as Beijing Sport University). Renowned coaches Li Junfeng and Wu Bin made extra efforts to help the talented boy develop. Wu Bin even bought food for Li's family in order to boost Li's protein intake.
At the age of eleven, Li became a member of the 1974 China national wushu team which traveled to the United States during the time of the Ping-pong diplomacy. The group performed for American audiences in Hawaii, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., and additionally in Mexico City and Hong Kong. When the Chinese National Wushu Team went to perform for President Richard Nixon in the United States, he was asked by Nixon to be his personal bodyguard. Li replied, "I don't want to protect any individual. When I grow up, I want to defend my one billion Chinese countrymen!"
In November of the same year, the Beijing Wushu Team was founded and Li became a member. He became the national all-around champion four times from 1975 to 1979.
My winning first place caused quite a sensation because I was so young. I was 12 years old, and the other two medalists were in their mid- to late twenties. During the awards ceremony, as I stood on the top step of the podium, I was still shorter than the 2nd and 3rd place medalists. It must have been quite a sight.
Li is a master of several styles of wushu, especially changquan and fanziquan. He has also studied other arts including baguazhang, taijiquan, xingyiquan, zuiquan (drunken fist), yingzhaoquan (eagle claw), and tanglangquan (praying mantis fist). He also practiced weapons such as gunshu, daoshu, and jianshu as well as sanjiegun (three section staff).
Li retired from competitive wushu when he was only 18 due to a knee injury, but became an assistant coach of the Beijing Wushu team for a few years. Li's martial arts prowess would eventually contribute to his domestic and international fame.
In 2023, Li was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame.
The 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 on 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 film debut with the 1982 film Shaolin Temple. The film broke box office records in China, grossing CN¥161,578,014 (US$85,376,199) at the Chinese box office, from an estimated 500 million ticket sales. The sequel Kids From Shaolin sold an estimated 490 million tickets, making it 1984's highest-grossing film in China.
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;