Hi I’m Jackie Chan I was born in Hong Kong on April 7th, 1954. My parents, Charles and Lee-lee Chan named me Chan Kong-sang which means "born in Hong Kong." I weighed 12 pounds when I was born and my mother required surgery to deliver me. My parents were so poor that they had to borrow money from friends to pay the doctor.
Although my parents were poor, they had steady jobs at the French embassy in Hong Kong. My father was a cook and my mother was a housekeeper. Together, my family lived on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. When I was young, my father would wake me early in the morning and together we would practice kung fu. My father Charles Chan believed that learning kung fu would help build me character, teaching me patience, strength, and courage.
When I was seven years old my father Charles took a job as the head cook at the American embassy in Australia. He felt that it would be best for me to stay behind in Hong Kong to learn a skill and so enrolled me in the China Drama Academy where I would live for the next 10 years of my life.
During school, I learned martial arts, acrobatics, singing, and acting. The school was meant to prepare boys for a life in the Peking Opera. Chinese opera was very different from any other kind of opera. It included singing, tumbling, and acrobatics as well as martial arts skills and acting. Students at the school were severely disciplined and were beaten if they disobeyed or made mistakes. It was a very harsh and difficult life but I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed. I rarely saw his parents for many years.
While at the China Academy, I made my acting debut at age eight in the Cantonese movie "Seven Little Valiant Fighters: Big and Little Wong Tin Bar." I later teamed with other opera students in a performance group called "The Seven Little Fortunes." Fellow actors Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao were also members. Years later we work together and become known as The Three Brothers. As I got older I worked as a stuntman and an extra in the Hong Kong film industry.
When I was 17, I finally graduated from the China Drama Academy. Unfortunately the Chinese opera was no longer very popular, so me and my classmates had to find other work. This was difficult because at the school they were never taught how to read or write. The only work available to them was unskilled labor or stunt work. Each year many movies were made in Hong Kong and there was always a need for young, strong stuntmen. I was extraordinarily athletic and inventive, and soon gained a reputation for being fearless; I would try anything. Soon I was in demand.
Over the next few years, I worked as a stuntman, but when the Hong Kong movie industry began to fail, I was forced to go to Australia to live with his parents. I worked in a restaurant and on a construction site. It was there that he got the name "Jackie." A worker named Jack had trouble pronouncing "Kong-sang" and started calling Jackie "little Jack." That soon became “Jackie†and the name stuck.
I was very unhappy in Australia. The construction work was difficult and boring. My salvation came in the form of a telegram from a man named Willie Chan. Willie Chan worked in the Hong Kong movie industry and was looking for someone to star in a new movie being made by Lo Wei, a famous Hong Kong producer/director. Willie had seen me at work as a stuntman and had been impressed. I called Willie and we talked. I didn't know it but Willie would end up becoming his best friend and manager. Soon I was on my way back to Hong Kong to star in "New Fist of Fury." It was 1976 and I 21 years old.
Once I got back to Hong Kong, Willie Chan took control over my career. To this day I am quick to point out that I owe my success to Willie. However, the movies that I made for Lo Wei were not very successful. The problem was that my talents were not being used properly. It was only when I was able to contribute my own ideas that I became a star. I brought humor to martial arts movies; my first success was "Snake in Eagle's Shadow." This was followed by "Drunken Master" (another blockbuster) and my first ever directing job, "Fearless Hyena." All were big hits.
I was becoming a huge success in Asia. Unfortunately, it would be many years before the same could be said of my popularity in America. After a series of lukewarm receptions in the U.S., mostly due to miscasting, I left the States and focused my attention on making movies in Hong Kong. It would be 10 years before I returned to make Rumble in the Bronx, the movie that introduced me to American audiences and secured me a place in their hearts (and their box office). Rumble was followed by the Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon series which put me on the Hollywood List.
Despite my Hollywood successes, I became frustrated by the lack of varied roles for Asian actors and my own inability to control certain aspects of the filming in America. I continued to try, however, making The Tuxedo, The Medallion, and Around the World in 80 Days, none of which was the blockbuster that Rush Hour or Shanghai Noon had been.
My lifelong devotion to fitness has served me well as I continue to do stunt work and action sequences in my films. In recent years, my focus has shifted and I am trying new genres of film – fantasy, drama, romance – and spending more and more time on my charity work. I take my work as Ambassador for UNICEF/UNAIDS very seriously and spends all of my spare time working tirelessly for children, the elderly, and those in need. I continue to make films in Hong Kong, including the blockbuster drama New Police Story in 2004.
I’ve have been married to my wife, Lin Feng-Jiao since 1982 and I have a son, named Jaycee Chan
