Bolo Yeung

Bolo Yeung — Biography

Bolo Yeung, born Yang Sze on 3 July 1946 in China's Guangdong province, is a martial artist, former competitive bodybuilder and screen actor. He took up kung fu at ten, later settled in Hong Kong and turned to bodybuilding, taking the Mr. Hong Kong title in 1970 and keeping it for a decade.

After acting and stunt work for the Shaw Brothers studio, his international break came in 1973 as the henchman "Bolo" in Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon — the part that supplied the screen name he has used ever since. Accounts of their friendship trace it to a cigarette commercial the two shot together.

Across the 1970s and 1980s he was a fixture of Hong Kong martial-arts pictures, cast almost invariably as the villain. Western audiences came to know him as Chong Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme's opponent in Bloodsport (1988); the two met again in Double Impact (1991), where he played Moon. He also worked repeatedly with the Canadian filmmaker Jalal Merhi, beginning with Fearless Tiger (1991). Nicknamed "The Beast from the East", he has appeared in more than sixty films.