James Lew, Emmy-Winning Stunt Coordinator and Fight Choreographer, Dies at 73

• James Lew, stunt coordinator and fight choreographer, died August 23 in Los Angeles at 73.
• His death certificate, reported October 12, gives the cause as end-stage congestive heart failure.
• He designed the Chinatown fight in “Big Trouble in Little China” and won an Emmy for “Luke Cage.”

Posted: August 24, 2026

James Lew, the Emmy-winning stunt coordinator, fight choreographer and second unit action director whose work bridged Hong Kong fight grammar and American screen action for five decades, died Sunday, August 23, in Los Angeles. He was 73. His wife, Jordanna, confirmed the death, which followed a period of hospitalization.

Lew's résumé is the kind that only accumulates through sustained, unglamorous department work: roughly 150 stunt-crew credits against 183 on-camera roles, a split that tracks the arc of a martial artist who moved from performing in front of the lens to designing what happens in front of it. He came up competing in tournaments after starting martial arts at 14, broke into film and television in the 1970s, and by the mid-'80s was choreographing — the Chinatown gang battle in John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China remains one of the most-cited American fight sequences of its era, and it was Lew's design work. Fight choreography credits followed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Double Impact and The Crow series, with stunt and coordination work across the Rush Hour trilogy, Lethal Weapon 4, Timecop, The Perfect Weapon, Best of the Best and, more recently, HBO Max's Warrior.

The 2017 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination on Marvel's Luke Cage was the industry's formal acknowledgment of what the fight community already knew. Lew coordinated a show whose action had to read as heavy, grounded, bulletproof-but-not-weightless — a specific coordination problem, since the character's invulnerability removes the usual tension and forces the impact to live in the choreography and the reactions rather than in jeopardy. Mike Colter, who carried that work on camera, posted word of Lew's death and credited him with setting the tone of the production's first season.

For coordinators, the more instructive part of the résumé may be what Lew did with the craft rather than in it. Black Belt Magazine's tribute pins his real skill as "the difference between being able to fight and being able to make a fight tell a story on screen" — the distinction that separates a martial artist from a fight designer, and the one most performers spend a career trying to internalize. He moved past coordinating into second unit action direction and then into the chair, making his directorial debut with 18 Fingers of Death in 2006 and co-directing Made in Chinatown in 2021, a coordinator-to-director path that is still rare enough to be worth studying.

He was inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 2024 — the latter in the Stuntman category, a recognition awarded by his own trade rather than by the wider industry. Lew also spoke publicly about set safety, telling Deadline in 2017, after a run of stunt fatalities, that no shot was worth a performer's life. He is survived by his wife, Jordanna, and stepson, Ryan.

The cause was confirmed on October 12. TMZ, which obtained the death certificate from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, reports that it lists end-stage congestive heart failure and no other significant contributing conditions, and that Lew died at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles and was cremated. His wife told the outlet he had been managing health problems for some time. For a performer whose fifty-year file runs on controlled impact, the record now says plainly that what ended it was not the work — a distinction worth having on paper in a trade where an obituary without a stated cause tends to get read as one more set story.

Source: Film Combat Syndicate — In Memoriam: James Lew (1952-2026) · Black Belt Magazine — James Lew: An Unforgettable Life (1952–2026) · JoBlo — Legendary Hollywood stuntman and martial arts actor James Lew passes away at 73 · TMZ — Hollywood Stuntman James Lew’s Cause of Death Revealed

Learn more on IMDb: James Lew