When you think of Bruce Lee, you don't immediately think of somebody with terrible eyesight - you know, because of all that super-precision martial artistry that he was into. And yet it's true: Lee had really poor eyesight, was near-sighted, and so struggled to see anything with total accuracy. This was partly one of the reasons that he got into Wing Chung, because it was a martial art with an emphasis on actual contact rather than sight. As a result of said terrible eyesight, however, Bruce Lee also happened to be one of the first people to ever try out contact lenses. Unfortunately, he deemed them to be way too uncomfortable (which they really were back in those days - can you imagine?), so he instead opted to wear those huge, nerdy "Coke-bottle" glasses you see now and again. He even wore them on-screen in Fist of Fury! Why, you're wondering? Well, apparently it had something to with the fact that Lee liked to wear them occasionally to remind himself of his heritage and ancestry, and that he wasn't always a superstar with lots of money. This also meant that he avoided being shipped out to Vietnam during the war in 1963 - he failed the medical! Who'd have thought?
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.