Betty Ting Pei

Betty Ting Pei was born in Beijing, China to a prominent and politically influential family. Her father and grandfather were physicians, and her mother was descended from warlords. The family migrated to Taiwan when she was two. In 1968, she joined the Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong, and Betty was one of its rising starlets when in 1971 she met martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. The controversy and many rumors surrounding Lee's mysterious death in her apartment in 1973 seriously damaged her own career. Although insisting for years that she and Lee were just friends, she admitted in a 2006 radio interview that they had been lovers for more than a year at the time of his death. She also said that the public censure and criticism she received had driven her to drug use as a means of escape, and while she was now clean, she still had psychological problems.