Death of Bruce Lee was a huge setback for Asians
The premature death of Bruce Lee was a huge setback in several ways - in my opinion - for ALL Asians, not just Asian actors, and not just for Chinese people. At a minimum, Bruce Lee was on the threshhold of becoming the first, international, mega-Asian movie superstar. I mean an Asian actor, taken seriously. Back then and even today, you need to make it big first in Hollywood before becoming an international star. Oh true, you can become a movie star first in your own home country, but only when those movie stars break out into big name Hollywood movies does their fame and success skyrocket seriously.
Bruce Lee made many enemies, ironically, much more so among the Chinese and to a much lesser extent, the Japanese, who curiously, evinced little outrage because Bruce Lee didn't put down Japanese karate nor Japanese culture. For most Asians, Bruce Lee was the 'face' of a growing respect of Asians and Asian culture in the West. When Bruce Lee died prematurely in July 1973, he took all that with him to his grave.
Over the next three decades, other Asian movie stars emerged out of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and then Red China itself in the late 90s. But none of them has yet to match the international and American stature of fame and esteem of Bruce Lee.
Yeah, go ahead and debate me here about other Asians stars like Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. None of them matched the international esteem that Bruce Lee achieved. Bruce Lee was not a comedy kung fu actor. He thought real Chinese Kung Fu could be advanced through serious depiction in action movies. He opened the door for Kung Fu instruction to non-Chinese (Unverified stories claim that deadly, hand-to-hand, Chinese kung fu was being taught to American special forces and CIA operatives back in the fifties and sixties by possibly Nationalist Chinese kung fu instructors, under conditions of great secrecy. I have personal second-hand account information, a former grade school buddy who told me his retired special forces dad had described a hand-to-hand combat training session back in the sixties where he was being taught the Chinese eagle claw technique of using the thumb and first two fingers like an eagle's claw to rip open an opponent's throat; that the instructor according to my memory, was a Chinese man)