Jet Li Net Worth

How much is Jet Li worth?

Net Worth:$250 Million
Profession:Professional Actor
Date of Birth:April 26, 1963 (age 58)
Country:China
Height:
1.68 m

About Jet Li

Jet Li, also known as Li Lianjie (Yangzhong), was born in Singapore on April 26, 1963. He is a martial artist and former Wushu champion who has an estimated net worth of $250 million. Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat chose movie parts that capitalized on the identities they had developed in their native Hong Kong when they decided to try their luck in Hollywood. But when Jet Li made the decision to transfer to Hollywood, he brazenly abandoned the upstanding hero that Asian viewers had grown to love and assumed the part of the merciless antagonist in Lethal Weapon 4.

Chinese-born film actor, film producer and martial artist Jet Li has an estimated net worth of $250 million dollars, as of 2023. Li is also a retired Wushu (Chinese Kungfu) champion.

Jet Li was Born April 26, 1963 in Beijing, Hebei, China.

Jet Li worked with action heroes Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture in the 2010 movie The Expendables. He then briefly reprised his character in the The Expendables 2 sequel in 2012 before making a third appearance in The Expendables 3 in 2014. Li had been cast alongside Vin Diesel in XXX: Return of Xander Cage, but Donnie Yen has since taken Li’s place, according to a Facebook post by Diesel. Li was chosen to play the Chinese Emperor in the live-action film Mulan in 2020. Jet Li’s net worth is projected to reach $250 million as of 2023.

The Villain

“They came to me with the role of the villain,” Li said in 1998, “and it was very different for me because in twenty-five films all I played was heroes. I was a little worried about that. I said, look at my face. ‘Look at my smile. Am I a villain?’ They said just turn it around. Use another face. So I said okay.”

The nimble Asian action hero made a wise decision. Li made his Hollywood debut as an Asian triad henchman who spent the whole of the movie kicking Mel Gibson in the butt. But despite losing the final battle, he gained new admirers in America thanks to his impressive martial arts demonstration.

Li has had extensive training since he was a young child growing up in Communist China, which has contributed to his physical strength. Before turning thirteen, he won five Mainland Wu Shu championships. Eleven years old in 1974, he traveled to the United States as part of a cultural exchange program to play for President Richard Nixon. The slick and showy Wu Shu martial arts technique has attracted a lot of attention from potential movie producers. Li told how a Hong Kong producer approached him about acting the same year he gave a performance at the White House.

“A big movie company, the manager come up to me and say, ‘Your kung fu is pretty good. When you grow up do you want to become big movie star?’ But I was eleven years old. Then every year he came to me and say the same thing. Then five years later, I’m seventeen-years old. He said to me, ‘I don’t want to wait anymore, just shoot right now.’ So he gave me the leading role in my very first movie, The Shaolin Temple. I was seventeen years old. Then my life changed.”

In such Hong Kong movies as Once Upon a Time in China, The Tai Chi Master, and My Father is a Hero, Li would spend more than a dozen years portraying monks, police officers, and morally upright heroes. Even Li, who flashed his wide boyish grin as he described his character in Lethal Weapon 4 as “very interesting,” was taken aback by his choice to deviate from type for his American debut in 1998. The persona is extremely impressionable, intelligent, and cool. He never uses a gun; instead, he kills people using kung fu.

Li was able to recruit foreign talent for that movie, including Hong Kong action director Corey Yuen, with whom Li had previously collaborated on My Father is a Hero. Li also assisted in the combat choreography, something he frequently performed in Hong Kong.

“In Hong Kong, I am not only the actor I also produce many of the movies, so I always work with the action director,” said Li, “We talk about the character first, what kind of character, and then we talk about the fight, what kind of style for this character.”

Making props active rather than passive aspects in a scene is a part of the Hong Kong action heritage. Li uses his belt as a weapon in the mind-blowing Fist of Legend to prevent getting skewered by a samurai sword. Additionally, everything from tables to liquor bottles to money bags is used in a protracted duel in Once Upon a Time in China. Li is concerned that this technique might not always work well in American movies.

“We need to talk about if maybe Hong Kong style is too much for the American audiences,” Li said with a grin, “Hong Kong style may be too much. Maybe use the door, use all the chairs, tables, [then grabbing my microphone] microphones. Maybe we need to take back a little bit.”

In his Hollywood action movies, where the action star scarcely breaks a sweat, Li has so far just given American audiences a taste of his potential. That’s why he went back to Asia to create such classics as Hero and Fearless in between Hollywood fodder like Romeo Must Die, Cradle 2 the Grave, and Kiss of the Dragon. Li, though, appears committed to bringing some of that flamboyant, extravagant Hong Kong aesthetic to America. Forbidden Kingdom, a China-U.S. co-production with an American director and actor that was shot in China and had a wonderful fusion of east and west aesthetics, reflects that.

“I think if every day you ate hamburger and pizza,” Li Said, “sometimes you need to go to the Chinese restaurant and order Chinese food. You think pretty good, delicious because before you didn’t know. Different styles are better.”

On August 1, 2008, Li decided to spice things up a bit and played yet another villain, this time in the most recent entry in the The Mummy series. Li says very little in the movie, but he has never needed to speak to impress people; his hands and feet do the most of the talking. He also shows himself to be pretty eloquent.

Jet Li Discusses the Action Thriller, ‘War’

Jet Li was slouching on a chair when I arrived on the War set; this is a pose we never see on television. When the time for action came, though, he erupted into life and dashed through the wreckage of an exploding car dealership, pursuing his foe with a sword. During a break, we had the opportunity to chat with Jet Li’s more composed persona, who will be shown in his future movie playing a Chinese assassin in the US.

War Isn’t a Martial Arts Movie: “Our movie, this character, I never played this kind of character before because myself, I don’t know whether he’s good or bad. That really depends later when you see the movie. When the audience sees the movie, they decide. I only know this character is very violent and has a reason. Something [he] always keeps in his heart, his belief. The other movies I play, a lot of characters are very clearly good guys or a cop or the master in Chinese films. Very straightforward from the top to the end.

This one, he’s violent and there’s a big difference between a martial arts movie and this kind of movie. A martial arts movie, like recently I made Fearless, it doesn’t just have martial arts. It also has philosophy. How to use martial arts just for violence to kill people, or you can use martial arts to stop something, to help people. How you use it, just like a weapon. A weapon is not good and not bad. It really depends on the person using it. So martial arts has a lot of culture behind physical moves.

This, I don’t think is a martial arts movie. It is an action movie. It’s not a typical Chinese [movie] we call Kung Fu or a martial arts movie.”

The Challenge of Getting Into a Violent Character: “It’s quite difficult. Before, it was easy. Before, you’re an actor, you just do the job. You’re acting sometimes as a father, I play a father but at the time maybe I wasn’t a father yet. I played a lot of different characters. Even Lethal Weapon 4, I played the bad guy. I didn’t think it was so far [out]. It’s just the past maybe eight years, I became a Buddhist, I always say violence is not the only solution. I made a few movies, one is Hero, one is Danny the Dog, one is Fearless. I think [those] three movies continue to talk about my personal belief that violence is not the only solution. I try, through the film, to talk about my personal belief. When I suddenly go back to this very violent character, I’m struggling. So you need to be very clear you’re just an actor. Even though I don’t agree with what this guy is doing, I need to do it best. When I go to the set, I forget I’m Jet Li first. I’m [part of] this world. Then I go back, even when I go home, I think, ‘Oh, why am I doing this?’ So I need to know it’s not me, it’s somebody else.”

Accidents Happen During Filming – It’s a Fact of Life: “If somebody tells you making an action movie doesn’t hurt the other, I think he’s lying. …You’re never going to punch the other or something, for sure. For sure. But for an action actor, usually when we say ‘got injured’ that means you go to the hospital. Production stopped. Really. Then we say, ‘Oh, somebody got injured because the movie cannot [go on]. Shooting stopped.’ If they just [accidentally hit], you cut, your black and blue, you cut your nose, just go backstage, put a bandage on and continue to work. That’s just normal. That’s not ‘injured’.”

Jet Li on the Direction His Career’s Taking: Is he stepping back from martial arts movies? “No, I didn’t say that,” answered Li. “I said Fearless is my last martial arts movie because I put my heart into that character.

All my belief. The physical part, the mental part, everything in that movie. I’ve been learning martial arts since I was eight years old and the character I played is a great martial artist. And also he died at 42 years. The same age when I made that movie, so I put a lot of my life experiences in that film. I said that’s the last martial arts film, because martial arts in my mind is totally different. The Chinese character, how they write about martial arts is to stop war. Stop the war or stop the fighting. The two words, put them together is martial art, like that kind of idea. The real meaning is that, so a few thousand years ago, they started martial arts meaning to stop war. But later on we take out the art, we only fight, fight, fight. Show the violence only. So I told it very clearly in that film. But this kind of film, an action film, I will continue playing [these characters and] making action films. Action – just action. You can find a lot of physical contact, fights, street fight. In my own heart it’s not about art. It’s a different type of movie.”

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