James Wing Woo

James Wing Woo was a martial artist and actor who was born in Oleum, California, in 1922. He had a martial arts education, and in 1961 the Academy of Karate Kung fu began operating from a large storefront on Hollywood Boulevard. In the 1970s, as Bruce Lee and other martial artists brought kung fu fighting to movie screens, Woo and his most accomplished students attracted the attention of Hollywood producers and directors. His first screen role came in Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite (1975), after he nearly threw the director out of his studio. He played Tao Yi there, and he noted that he never performed martial arts in any of his 15 roles, which included The Killer Elite, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), and an episode of the television mystery series Monk. His roles included an elder martial arts master, a priest, a criminal clan leader, and a dead Chinese man. He died in 2014.