James Lew, the veteran stunt performer and coordinator who worked with John Carpenter on Big Trouble in Little China, They Live and Escape From L.A. and in scores of other films and TV shows, has died. He was 73.
Lew died Sunday, his wife, Jordana Potter, announced. No cause of death was revealed.
In what could be his best-known role, Lew lost a fierce (but very funny) battle with Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley in Jim Abrahams’ parody of the Rambo films, Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), and he was in on plenty of action in the Rush Hour movies released in 1998, 2001 and 2007.
In 2017, he received an Emmy for outstanding stunt coordination for a drama series, limited series or movie for his work on the Netflix series Luke Cage.
Lew also did stunts for Black Rain (1989), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), Undercover Blues (1993), Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), The Last Samurai (2003), Tropic Thunder (2008), Star Trek (2009), Inception (2010), Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Lew was born on Sept. 6, 1952, and raised in South Central Los Angeles.
“My lifelong adventure into the martial arts began when I was 14 years old,” he said in an undated interview. “It was part of a natural discovery and curiosity that I decided to ‘try’ training in the martial arts. The school was a combination of taekwondo and Tang Soo Do.”
He played a monk and performed stunts on a 1974 episode of ABC’s Kung Fu, then appeared in John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and in the Hong Kong movie The Young Dragon (1979).
For Carpenter, he served as stunt coordinator in Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and handled stunts on They Live (1988) and Escape From L.A. (1996).
Lew portrayed a martial arts instructor in the Carl Weathers-starring Action Jackson (1988) and a deadly killer in Red Sun Rising (1994) and showed up on the big screen in Timecop (1994), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) and Traffic (2000), among many other films.
Meanwhile, he also could be spotted on television in everything from T.J. Hooker, The Fall Guy, The A-Team, Falcon Crest and Murder, She Wrote to Roseanne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Walker, Texas Ranger, Alias and Westworld.
Lew wrote and directed the mockumentary 18 Fingers of Death! (2006), which was inspired by his life in Hollywood, and co-directed the parody Made in Chinatown (2021), featuring Vincent Pastore.
He was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 2024.
