Martial arts legend Jet Li’s toughest fight yet? Finding inner peace
(CNN) — Jet Li’s work has always carried some degree of risk. Performing many of his own stunts, the martial arts star has fought opponents on shaky bamboo ladders (“Once Upon a Time in China”), leapt from tall buildings (“Romeo Must Die”) and dodged fireball explosions (“High Risk”).
But no amount of training could have prepared him for his real-life brushes with death.
Li was vacationing with his young family in the Maldives when tsunami waves triggered by the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake suddenly hit the beach. “I have my wife and two daughters in that moment,” he recalled, saying they all felt “very close to death.”
“The water is here,” he said, gesturing to his chin. “If it was a little bit higher, 20 inches, then I would have died.”
The 63-year-old martial arts star was speaking candidly about his near-death experiences in a video call from LA, where he had been promoting his new memoir “Beyond Life and Death: The Way of True Freedom.”
A year after the tsunami, Li had another scare when he fell from a 12-foot-tall tower while filming “Fearless,” leaving him with internal injuries. A few months later, he suffered from severe altitude sickness at a remote monastery in Sichuan, China.
“Each time I survived,” he writes in the book, “my desire to become truly free became stronger.”
By “free” Li means “zizai” (in Mandarin Chinese). The Buddhist term is a combination of “zi,” meaning “self,” and “zai,” which translates as “to be.” Together, the words mean being content with whatever life throws at you or, as Li writes, “the liberation from the need to control anything.”
Part-autobiography part-philosophy, the actor’s story is told via 10 “insights” acquired through his study of Tibetan Buddhism, including mantras like “separate the bitterness from the pain” and “be a grandson to the world.”
He’s hoping to impart wisdom to readers from his ongoing quest for ultimate inner peace.
“I think a lot of people in the world today know how to train their body: be healthy, lose weight, exercise,” he told CNN, while adding that it’s also important to train the mind.
“Happy is mental, healthy is the body. There are two parts. You need to find a way to balance them.”
Now more focused on charity work and his spiritual journey than making movies (this year’s “Blades of the Guardians” was his first film in six years), Li doesn’t care much about fame these days. Still, he was pleasantly surprised earlier this month when a crowd at LA’s Gold Gala — which celebrates Asian Pacific talent — rose to its feet as he walked on stage to accept one of the event’s special honors.
“It really moved me,” he said. “Sometimes when I’m in China… people just say, ‘He is old; he cannot make movies,” he said. “I thought a lot of people had already forgotten who Jet Li is.”
But who could forget? Li is revered as one of cinema’s great martial arts actors, appearing in epics like Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” (2002) and Hollywood blockbusters “Lethal Weapon 4” (1998) and “Romeo Must Die” (2000). The latter two movies helped “open the door to the world,” he said, following early successes in Hong Kong’s storied but comparatively small martial arts film industry.
Born in Beijing, Li was recruited by a state-run sports school at the age of 8 to train in wushu, or Chinese martial arts. By 12, he had won the first of five consecutive national champion titles, sometimes beating opponents twice his age.
His acrobatic skills helped him land his first movie role, in “Shaolin Temple” (1982), in which he played a young man seeking refuge at a monastery to master kung fu and avenge his father’s murder, ultimately becoming a warrior monk. (The movie ignited a martial arts movement across China).
He worked steadily over the next two decades, establishing himself as a major star in Asia. Then Hollywood came knocking. In the late 1990s, he accepted the role of a ruthless triad gang member in “Lethal Weapon 4,” an antagonist to Mel Gibson’s rule-breaking cop character, Martin Riggs.
It was the first time in Li’s career that he had played a villain, a decision he wrestled with. His then-girlfriend (and now wife), the actor Nina Li Chi, found the script “insulting” to Chinese people and urged him to turn the role down, even threatening to break up with him, he said.
But despite his reservations, Li knew the opportunity could be life-changing. “Give me one chance,” he recalled thinking. “I can break the door. Give me one chance. I will try my best to change their thinking.”
The risk paid off. And Li said he shaped the role into something more palatable, influencing everything from costumes to fighting style.
“In the beginning, the character was terrible. Terrible,” he said. According to Li, the movie’s Chinese actors were going to look “like Qing dynasty people,” in “really traditional 1930s Chinatown.”
“I said, ‘No, no, no, listen. If you want me to play today’s Asian, whether they are a good guy or bad guy, they’re modern. They drink wine, they talk gently. You don’t know if they’re bad or good,” Li said.
He went on to star in 2000’s “Romeo Must Die,” which, despite mixed reviews, grossed over $91 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. This time, he played the hero, a likable ex-cop, opposite the late singer and actor Aaliyah.
Nearly two dozen movies followed in quick succession, but in the past decade his film career has slowed.
In 2009, Li was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, or an overactive thyroid. His case was particularly severe, and at times, left him looking frail due to weight loss, though it’s now “finally under control.”
Li has also had to face the effects of physical aging — a challenge for any actor but a particularly confronting one for someone who made their name through physical prowess.
Filming fight scenes for “Blades of the Guardians” in 2024 proved difficult at times. “I used to do 10 moves in one second; now I need 10 seconds to do one move,” he acknowledged in his book.
But Li continues to be guided by “zizai,” which he describes as embracing a “so be it” mindset.
So is Li now free?
“When people tell you ‘I’m zizai’ that means that people are not zizai, right?” he said. “So I’m still on the journey.”
“Beyond Life and Death: The Way of True Freedom by Jet Li” is out now.
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