The Lost Interview: Bruce Lee on Philosophy, Fame, and "Being like water"

In 1971, just months before his tragic death and subsequent global superstardom, Bruce Lee sat down in Hong Kong for what would become his only lengthy television interview in English. The host was Pierre Berton, and the conversation that followed was nothing short of legendary.

For decades, fans have watched grainy, low-quality versions of this footage to catch glimpses of Lee’s brilliance. Today, I am proud to present a fully restored, 4K version of this historic conversation. The audio has been denoised, the image sharpened, and the experience preserved as it was meant to be seen.

In this interview, Bruce isn't just an action star; he is a philosopher. He discusses the difference between Eastern and Western thinking, the trap of rigid "styles," the struggles of facing racism in Hollywood, and, of course, his famous "Be Water" philosophy.

Bruce Lee vs. Pierre Berton (1971): The "Be Like Water" Interview (Full Transcript)

 

Full Interview Transcript: Bruce Lee & Pierre Berton (1971)

Pierre Berton (Narration): Bruce Lee faces a real dilemma. He's on the verge of stardom in the United States with a projected TV series on the horizon, but he's just achieved stardom as a film actor here in Hong Kong. So what does he choose? The East or the West? It's a kind of problem that most budding movie actors would welcome.

It's the Pierre Berton Show, the program that comes to you from the major capitals of the world. This edition comes to you from Hong Kong. And Pierre's guest is the man who taught Karate, Judo, and Chinese boxing to James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, and James Coburn. The newest Mandarin superstar, known in the West for his appearances in Batman, The Green Hornet, Ironside, and Longstreet. His name is Bruce Lee, and he doesn't even speak Mandarin.

Pierre Berton: Well, how can you play in Mandarin movies if you don't even speak Mandarin? How do you do that?

Bruce Lee: Well, first of all, I speak only Cantonese. So, I mean, there is quite a difference as far as pronunciation and things like that go.

Pierre Berton: So somebody else's voice is used right for you?

Bruce Lee: Definitely, definitely. You just make the words.

Pierre Berton: Doesn't that sound strange when you go to the movies, especially in Hong Kong, in your own town, and you see yourself with somebody else's voice?

Bruce Lee: Oh, not really. You see, because most of the Mandarin pictures done here are dubbed anyway. I mean they shoot without sound. So it doesn't, you know, make any difference.

Pierre Berton: Your lips never quite make the right words, do they?

Bruce Lee: Well, that's where the difficulty lies. You see, because the Cantonese have a different way of saying things distinct from the Mandarin. So, I have to find something similar to that and keep a kind of feeling going behind that... matching the Mandarin do.

Pierre Berton: Like the old silent days. But I gather in the movies made here, the dialogue is pretty stilted anyway.

Bruce Lee: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, to me, a motion picture is motion. You gotta keep the dialogue down to the minimum.

Pierre Berton: Did you look at many Mandarin movies before you started to play?

Bruce Lee: Yes, yes, yes.

Pierre Berton: What did you think of them when you saw them?

Bruce Lee: Quality-wise, I have to admit that it's not quite up to the standard. However, it is growing. And it is getting higher and higher, and going toward that standard that I would term quality.

Pierre Berton: They say the secret of your success in that movie, The Big Boss, which rocketed you to stardom in Asia, was that you did your own fighting. As an expert in the various martial arts in China, what did you think of the fighting that you saw in the movies that you studied before you became a star?

Bruce Lee: Well, definitely in the beginning I had no intention whatsoever that what I was practicing would lead to this. But martial art has a very, very deep meaning as far as my life is concerned. Because as an actor, as a martial artist, as a human being, all these I have learned from martial art.

Pierre Berton: Maybe for our audience who doesn't know what it means, you might explain exactly what you mean by martial art.

Bruce Lee: Right. Martial art includes all the combative arts like Karate, Judo, Chinese Kung Fu or Chinese boxing, whatever you call it. Like Aikido... I can go on and on. But it's a combative form of fighting. Some of them became sport, but some of them are still not. They use, for instance, kicking to the groin, jabbing fingers at the eyes and things like that.

Pierre Berton: No wonder you're successful in it; Chinese movies are full of this kind of action anyway. So you didn't have to use a double when you moved into the motion picture world here. You did it all yourself. Can you break five or six pieces of wood with your hand or your foot?

Bruce Lee: I'll probably break my hand and foot!

Pierre Berton: But tell me a little bit—you set up a school in Hollywood for people like James Garner and Steve McQueen and the others. Why would they want to learn Chinese martial art? Because of a movie role?

Bruce Lee: Not really. To me, at least the way I teach it, all type of knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge. So therefore, they are coming in and asking me to teach them not so much of how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in. Rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination, or whatsoever. He is paying me to show him, in combat form, the art of expressing the human body.

Pierre Berton: Which is acting in a sense, isn't it?

Bruce Lee: It might sound too philosophical, but it's unacting acting or acting unacting.

Pierre Berton: You've lost me.

Bruce Lee: It's a combination of both. Here is the natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you become all of a sudden a mechanical man—no longer a human being. So it is a successful combination of both. Therefore, it is not pure naturalness or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness. Yin Yang.

Pierre Berton: James Coburn played in a movie called Our Man Flint in which he used Karate. Is that what he learned from you?

Bruce Lee: He learned it after. Oh yeah, after he played in The Iron Man. You see, actually, I do not teach Karate because I do not believe in styles anymore. I do not believe that there is such a thing as the Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting. Unless human beings have three arms and four legs, we will have a different form of fighting. But basically, we have only two hands and two feet. So styles tend to not only separate men because they have their own doctrines, and then the doctrine becomes the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have styles, if you just say, "Here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely?"—now that way, you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization. That way, it's a process of continuing growth.

Pierre Berton: You talk about Chinese boxing. How does it differ from, say, our kind of boxing?

Bruce Lee: Well, first we use the feet. And then we use the elbow. And use the thumb too. We use it all. You have to, because that is the expression of the human body. When you're talking about combat, if it is a sport, you have regulations, you have rules. But when you're talking about real fighting with no rules—well then, baby, you better train every part of your body. And when you do punch—I mean you gotta put the whole hip into it. And snap it, and get all your energy in there. And make this into a weapon.

Pierre Berton: What is the difference between Chinese boxing and what we see these young men doing at eight o'clock every morning on the rooftops called shadow boxing?

Bruce Lee: That is part of Chinese boxing. There are so many schools. Everybody here seems to be going like this all the time... well that's good. I'm very glad to see that because at least somebody is caring for their own body. But it's a slow form of exercise called Tai Chi Chuan. It's more of an exercise for the elderly, not so much for combat. The idea is running water never grows stale. So you gotta just keep on flowing.

Pierre Berton: Of all your students—James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, James Coburn—who was the best?

Bruce Lee: Depending. As a fighter? Steve McQueen. Now he is good in that department because that son of a gun got the toughness in him. I mean he would say, "Alright baby, here I am," and he'll do it. Now James Coburn is a peace-loving man. He appreciates the philosophical part of it, therefore his understanding of it is deeper than Steve's. So it's really hard to say.

Pierre Berton: Quite clearly the Oriental attitude is that the three [philosophy, art, sport] are facets of the same things.

Bruce Lee: Listen. Ultimately, martial art means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling... or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself... and to express myself honestly, now that, my friend, is very hard to do. And you have to train. You have to keep your reflexes so that when you want it, it's there. When you want to move, you're moving. And when you move, you are determined to move. Not taking one inch, not anything less than that.

Pierre Berton: I want to ask you about your movie and TV career. I'm told that you got the job on The Green Hornet, where you played Kato, mainly because you're the only Chinese-looking guy who could pronounce the name of the leading character, Britt Reid.

Bruce Lee: I made that as a joke, of course. It’s a heck of a name! I was super conscious. Now that's another interesting thing. Let's say if you learn to speak Chinese... it's not difficult to learn and speak the words. The hard thing is the feelings behind those words. Like when I first arrived in the United States and I look at a Caucasian, I really would not know whether he was putting me on or is he really angry? Because we have different way of reacting to it.

Pierre Berton: It's almost as if you came upon a strange race where a smile didn't mean what it does to us.

Bruce Lee: Of course not.

Pierre Berton: Tell me about the break when you played in Longstreet. This had an enormous effect on the audience.

Bruce Lee: The title of that particular episode is called "The Way of the Intercepting Fist." Now I think the successful ingredient in it was because I was being Bruce Lee... I just expressed myself honestly at that time. And because of that, I brought favorable mentioning like in the New York Times... "The Chinaman who incidentally came off quite convincingly enough to earn himself a television series."

Pierre Berton: Can you remember the lines that express your philosophy?

Bruce Lee: I said: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

Pierre Berton: So now two things have happened. First, there's a pretty good chance that you'll get a TV series in the States.

Bruce Lee: Well, I did Longstreet for Paramount, and Paramount wants me to be in a television series. On the other hand, Warner Brothers wants me to be in another one. But both of them, I think, want me to be in a modernized type of thing, and they think that the Western idea is out. Whereas I want to do the Western. Because how else can you justify all this punching and kicking and violence except in the period of the West?

Pierre Berton: I mean in nowadays you don't go around on the street kicking people.

Bruce Lee: Yeah that's it. I mean I don't care how good you are.

Pierre Berton: But this is true also of the Chinese dramas which are mainly costume dramas and they're all full of blood and gore over here.

Bruce Lee: Yeah. Well, unfortunately, I hope that the picture I am in would either explain why the violence was done, whether right or wrong. But unfortunately, pictures most of them here are done mainly just for the sake of violence. Like fighting for thirty minutes, get stabbed fifty times.

Pierre Berton: I'm fascinated that you came back. You are a martial artist, you came back to Hong Kong on the verge of success in Hollywood, and suddenly on the strength of one picture you become a superstar. Everybody knows you. You have to change your phone number, you get mobbed in the streets. Now what are you gonna do? Are you gonna be able to live in both worlds?

Bruce Lee: Well let me say this first of all: the word "superstar" really turns me off. Because the word "star," man, is an illusion. It is something what the public calls you. You should look upon oneself as an actor, man. I mean you would be very pleased if somebody said, "Hey man, you are a super actor!" It is much better than "superstar."

Pierre Berton: Therefore you've got to admit that you are a superstar. You're not gonna... if you're gonna give me the truth.

Bruce Lee: I am now. I'm honestly saying this, okay. Yes, I have been very successful. But I do not look upon myself as a star. I really don't.

Pierre Berton: Are you gonna stay in Hong Kong and be famous, or go to the United States?

Bruce Lee: I am gonna do both. Because I have already made up my mind that in the United States, I think something about the true Oriental should be shown. Hollywood sure as heck hasn't. It's always that pigtail and bouncing around "chop chop" with the eyes slanting.

Pierre Berton: Is it true that the first job you had was being cast as Charlie Chan's number one son?

Bruce Lee: Yeah, number one son. They were gonna make it into like a new Chinese James Bond type of thing. Now that the old man Chan is dead, Charlie is dead and his son is carrying on. But they didn't do that. Batman came along.

Pierre Berton: But by the way, I did a really terrible job in that. I have to say.

Pierre Berton: Have people come up in the industry and said, "Well we don't know how the audience are going to take a non-American?"

Bruce Lee: Such a question has been raised. In fact, it is being discussed, and that is why The Warrior is probably not gonna be on. Because unfortunately, such a thing does exist in this world. They think it's a risk. And I don't blame them. It's like in Hong Kong, if a foreigner came and became a star, I probably would have my own worry of whether the acceptance would be there. But that's alright, because if you honestly express yourself, it doesn't matter.

Pierre Berton: How about the other side of the coin? Is it possible that you are fairly hip and certainly Americanized... Are you too Western for audiences here?

Bruce Lee: I have been criticized for that! Oh yes, definitely. When I do the Chinese film, I'll try my best not to be as American as I have been adjusted to for the last twelve years in the States. But when I go back to the States, it seems to be the other way around. It's too exotic. They're trying to get me to do too many things that are really for the sake of being exotic. When you live in both worlds, it brings problems as well as its advantages.

Pierre Berton: Let me ask you whether the change in attitude of the Nixon administration towards China has helped your chances of starring in an American TV series.

Bruce Lee: Well first of all, this happened before that. But I do think that things of Chinese will be quite interesting for the next few years. Once the opening of China... it will bring more understanding. Maybe in the contrast of comparison some new thing might grow. It's a very rich period to be in. If I were born forty years ago, and I said "I'm gonna star in a TV series in America," well that might be a vague dream. But I think right now... maybe, man.

Pierre Berton: You still think of yourself as Chinese or do you ever think of yourself as North American?

Bruce Lee: You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I don't want to sound like Confucius, but under the sky, under the heaven, man, there is but one family. It just so happens, man, that people are different.

Take Action: Build Your Own Mental Power

Bruce Lee’s philosophy wasn't just for fighting; it was for living. He spoke about avoiding the trap of becoming a "mechanical man" and the difficulty of honestly expressing yourself.

To achieve that kind of clarity, you need a place to focus your mind.

If you are looking to bring more discipline and focus into your own life, I personally use and recommend the Power Place Planner. It is a tool designed to help you cut out the noise—the "unessential"—and focus purely on your goals.

Just as Bruce said, "Knowing is not enough, we must apply." This planner is where you apply.