James Lew spent much of his screen life making heroes look faster, tougher and funnier, whether he was trading blows with Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots! Part Deux or mapping fights for John Carpenter. Lew, the martial artist, actor and Emmy-winning stunt coordinator whose work ran through five decades of action filmmaking, died in Los Angeles on August 23, 2026, according to TMZ. He was 73.

Born on September 6, 1952, in Escalon, California, Lew was raised in South Central Los Angeles. He studied kung fu under Douglas Wong and became a fixture on Southern California's martial arts tournament circuit in the 1970s, competing in both empty-hand and weapons forms. That training carried him onto sets. He played a monk and performed stunts on a 1974 episode of Kung Fu, appeared in John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie two years later, and worked in the 1979 Hong Kong film The Young Dragon.

Big Trouble in Little China became the project where Lew's eye moved decisively behind the camera. He called the 1986 John Carpenter production his first studio film. In preproduction, he wandered among departments and stopped at the storyboard artist's desk, absorbed a quick lesson, and began drawing his own rough maps and stick figures to plan fights. Carpenter would review the pages and let him choose sequences to stage, Lew recalled in an interview. The drawings were simple, but they translated physical movement into shots, timing and story. The American Film Institute credits Lew and Jim Lau as the film's martial arts choreographers.

Lew went on to perform stunts on Carpenter's They Live and Escape From L.A. His credits became a tour through action cinema: Black Rain, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, The Last Samurai, Tropic Thunder, Star Trek, Inception and Avengers: Endgame. He contributed to each of the three Rush Hour films. In front of the camera, he was often the opponent whose precision sold another performer's power, and his fierce, comic bout with Sheen's Topper Harley in the 1993 Rambo spoof Hot Shots! Part Deux made that role part of the joke.

He also made room to shape whole projects. Lew wrote and directed 18 Fingers of Death! in 2006, turning his experiences in low-budget martial arts filmmaking into a mockumentary. In 2021, he co-directed Made in Chinatown. Those films joined acting, choreography, coordination and directing in the same career, the natural extension of a performer who had learned to think about where the camera needed to be as carefully as where a kick needed to land.

Marvel's Luke Cage brought those instincts together. For its first season, Lew built a fighting vocabulary around the character rather than around martial arts display. He called the approach 'smack fu,' blending softer defenses with touches of Hung Gar so that a superpowered hero could dispatch ordinary attackers without every blow becoming grotesque. The Television Academy awarded Lew the 2017 Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Drama Series, Limited Series or Movie. Lew later said the recognition mattered to him as the first Chinese American stunt coordinator to win the award, and as acknowledgment that stunt coordination carried responsibility for both story and safety.

In 2024, Black Belt Magazine inducted Lew alongside Simon Rhee and Jeff Imada in its newly established Stuntman category. The honor joined two halves of his working life: the tournament martial artist who learned how bodies move and the filmmaker who learned how an audience sees them move. His fight plans remain embedded in Big Trouble in Little China and Luke Cage, his performances animate decades of action movies, and his Emmy stands for the craft he spent a career bringing from the edge of the frame into view.