BRUCE LEE’S daughter, Shannon Lee, says it was “disheartening” to see Quentin Tarantino depict her father in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” as “an arrogant blowhard who was full of hot air.”

In the film, Brad Pitt’s stuntman character, Cliff Booth, trades cocky insults with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), and the two agree to an informal, best two-out-of-three rounds fight on the set of “The Green Hornet” TV show. Lee easily knocks Booth down in the first round, but in the second, Booth slams Lee into a car, stunning him. The fight is interrupted before the third round.

Shannon Lee said it’s disheartening to see her father portrayed as an arrogant blowhard, because in reality, as an Asian-American in the 1960s Hollywood, he had to work much harder to succeed than Booth and Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), the fictional, white protagonists of the film.

“I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie,” she said. “I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of like a rage fantasy of what would happen and they’re portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion.”

She added: “I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad-ass who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn’t need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive.”

Shannon Lee said Tarantino might be trying to make a point about how Bruce Lee was stereotyped, “but it doesn’t come across that way. ... And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others.”

Shannon Lee saw the film last Sunday. “It was really uncomfortable to sit in the theater and listen to people laugh at my father,” she said.

She said that her father was often challenged, and tried to avoid fights. “Here, he’s the one with all the puffery and he’s the one challenging Brad Pitt, which is not how he was,” she said.

She continues her father’s legacy through website BruceLee.com, her Bruce Lee Podcast, and the Bruce Lee Foundation, which hosts summer camps that teach children about her father’s martial arts and philosophy.

“What I’m interested in is raising the consciousness of who Bruce Lee was as a human being and how he lived his life,” she added. “All of that was flushed down the toilet in this portrayal, and made my father into this arrogant punching bag.”

She said she understood that many characters in the film are caricatures, but noted that the film didn’t make fun of Steve McQueen, who is played by Damian Lewis. She also pointed out that while “The Green Hornet” ran from 1967-68, her father’s hair and sunglasses are reminiscent of his look in the 1970s “Enter the Dragon” era.

She said she didn’t take issue, however, with Moh, the serious Bruce Lee fan who plays him in the film. She said he did a good job with some of her father’s mannerisms, and his voice.

“But I think he was directed to be a caricature,” Shannon Lee said.(SD-Agencies)