Original Name Chan Kong-sang
Father Charles Chan
Mother Lee-Lee Chan
Native Place Shandong
Primary School Nan Hua Elementary Academy (Primary 1)
Jackie Chan was born Chan Kong-sang (which means "Born in Hong Kong" Chan), April 7th, 1954, the Year of the Horse. Jackie was the only son of Charles and Lee-lee Chan, who were very poor and worked for the French ambassador to Hong Kong. Charles was a cook and a handyman, while Lee-Lee worked as a housekeeper. They lived in a room in the mansion of the French ambassador on the exclusive slopes of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.
Most babies are born nine months after being conceived. Jackie, on the other hand, stuck around an extra three months, so his mother had to have surgery to bring him into the world. Because Chan Kong-sang weighed 12 pounds at birth, his mother nicknamed him "Pao-pao", wich is Chinese for "cannonball". The bill for his mother's surgery came to HK$500 (about $26 US), and his parents' savings didn't come close to covering the cost. But the lady doctor who performed the surgery approached Jackie's nervous father with a deal. She had no kids of her own, she explained to him, and she knew he and Jackie's mother, Lee-lee, had no money. If Charles would allow her to "adopt" him, she would be willing to pay for the costs of the surgery and his mother's hospital stay. But Jackie was his parents' only son. He was their symbol of their new start in Hong Kong. Charles' friends lent him the money to pay off the hospital dept, and thanked the doctor for her generous offer.
In 1960, Charles had to move to Australia to work in the Chinese embassy there. It was at this time that Jackie was first enrolled in the Peking Opera school. Chan was to study there from the age of six/seven until the age of seventeen -ten years. Jackie's master at the school was Master Yu Jim-Yuen, to whom Jackie owes his entire career. There Jackie's name became Yuen Lo.
At the school, students were taught traditional Chinese arts of performing, singing, acting, and especially acrobatic and martial arts. Any number of traditional Chinese martial arts were taught, along with weaponry, stick fighting and the like. Students were forced to put in eighteen hour days and subjected to grueling physical demands, for example, holding headstands or stances for hours at a time. Beatings were very common. After some years, when Jackie's mother joined his father in Australia, Master Yu adopted Jackie, making him his godson. Jackie was invited to join "The Seven Little Fortunes", a performing group at the opera which performed at several locations in Hong Kong.
Many of Jackie's modern day co-stars also came from the Peking Opera School. Some of them are huge stars in Hong Kong today, including Samo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Yeun Wah -- the list is long! Samo Hung and Yen Biao have co-starred with Jackie several times, including the movies Winners and Sinners (Five Lucky Stars), Project A, My Lucky Stars, and Twinkle, Twinkly Lucky Stars to name just a few.
Jackie's first onscreen appearance came in 1962, when a director offered him a small role as a child actor in the Cantonese film Big and little Wong Tin-Bar. Jackie would go on to appear in several films, first as a child actor and then as a stuntman, before the age of seventeen
At seventeen, Jackie left the Peking Opera and found small roles in films. His first leading role was in 1971's Master with the Cracked Fingers, a fairly standard tale of revenge. In 1973 Jackie worked as in extra in two films that starred the biggest name in Kung-Fu movies at the time -Bruce Lee. In Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection), Bruce kicks Jackie through a building wall. Apparently, Jackie thew himself through the wall with no padding and with such vigor that Bruce was forced to ask if the young stuntman was all right.
Jackie was all right, and later that year appeared in Bruce Lee's breakthrough classic Enter the Dragon, again as one of the numerous people Bruce fights off. Although only on the screen briefly, Jackie's face can clearly be seen.
In 1976, after appearing in the film Hand of death (Countdown in Kung Fu), directed by a young John Woo, Jackie went to Australia a short while to be with his parents. He returned to Hong Kong the same year, and was signed as a lead actor by the Lo Wei film company. This is when Willie Chan became Jackie's best friend and personal manager, wich he still is today.
Jackie, who had been acting at this time under the name "Chen Yueng Lung" was renamed "Sing Lung" (means "already a dragon" or "become the dragon"), and in 1976 made his first film for Lo Wei, titled New Fist of Fury, a sequel to Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection). The film cast Jackie in a Bruce Lee type role, and although Jackie's martial arts talents are extraordinary, Jackie was not comfortable acting in Bruce's shadow. And the Hong Kong movie goers weren't comfortable with him there either. As Jackie said himself after his success, Bruce Lee could not be replaced. Jackie would go on to make a number of films for Wei, none of which were huge sucesses.
How Chan Kong-sang (Yuen Lo) became Jackie ChanIn 1976, after joining his parents in Australia, he decided he had to work to earn some money while he was there. Therefore, one of his father's friends, a guy named Jack, took Yuen Lo to a construction site to work. Jack knew that Kong-sang wasn't a name the Australian workers would get an easy grip on. "Aw, hell, his name's Jack, too," he said to his fellow workers. Over the months Jackie stayed there, "Jack" became "Jackie". And that's how "Jackie Chan" was born.
In 1978, Jackie was loaned to director Ng See Huen's Seasonal Film company for the film Snake in Eagle's Shadow. Unlike his previous films, the film had a light, humorous tone, better acting, and a better story. Free of the burden of trying to be like the late Bruce Lee, Jackie's expressive features, timing, and great comedic ability began to show themselves. The film was a hit in Hong Kong, and the cast and director reunited shortly thereafter to make the even more successful Drunken Master, which broke all the box office records in Hong Kong at the time. Jackie finally began to go off in a different direction, away from the style of Bruce Lee, and into his own clowning Kung-Fu style.
The success of Drunken Master gave Jackie more control over his films, and he directed and choreographed his next, and last, film for Lo Wei, 1979's Fearless Hyena. Following that film, Jackie realized he had to extricate himself from the meager talent of Lo Wei, and signed with Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest film company. However, this breach of contract angered Wei, who together with the Triads issued threats on Jackie Chan's life. To avoid any messy problems, Jackie was sent to America, where he was to try and break into the U.S. market. He made Battle Creek Brawl, which was a big flop, mostly because Jackie didn't get the chance to do the style he wanted. Instead of a hillarious Kung Fu artist, Jackie was a Chinese kid in America's 1930s. Jackie would also return to America in 1981 and 1984 to fill a small role as a Japanese driver in the Cannonball Run films. Jackie was bought out from Lo Wei at the amount of HK.$10 000 000 by Golden Harvest studio heads Raymond Chow and Leonard Ho. Jackie was free to ret urn to Hong Kong.
Jackie's trip to America was not a total waste, as he was first exposed to early American silent film stars like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Admiring their movement and timing, as well as their stunts, he realized that movement and physical control could lead to spectacular action scenes and communicate often better than words. His 1984 film Project A, set in early 1900's Hong Kong about rivalries between the police and coast guard, took him away from the traditional Kung-Fu genre and into a new direction. The film delivers tightly choreographed martial arts and physical humor as well as stunts. Jackie goes so far as to recreate Harold Lloyd's "hanging from the clock tower" stunt, falling three stories afterward. It was around this time that Jackie's stunts begin to get more spectacular, and to connect with the audience, Jackie performs them all himself, which would eventually become his trademark.
In 1983 Jackie appeared in the Samo Hung directed comedy Winners and Sinners. Jackie, Samo, and Yeun Biao had become good friends studying at the Peking Opera together, and each achieved individual stardom in the Hong Kong movie scene. Jackie considered Samo to be his "big brother" and Biao to be his "little brother". The three would go on to make seven movies together. In 1987 after the film Dragons Forever the group had a bit of a falling out over their direction, and have not appeared together in a film since. In 1996 however, Jackie and Samo reunited to make the film Mr. Nice Guy.
In 1985, Jackie again attempted to break into the American market with the film The Protector. The director attempted to make Jackie into a Clint Eastwood type character, and the film wasted not only Jackie's comic abilities, but his martial arts abilities as well. Disillusioned with the American style of filmmaking, Jackie returned to Hong Kong and directed and starred in the smash hit Police Story. This was a huge smash-hit, and the film featured the most dangerous stunts attempted up until that time, as well as incredible fight scenes, smashing unbelievable amounts of glass. Jackie would go on to make 4 sequels.
From there came hit after hit, including Armour of God, Project A II, Dragons Forever, Police Story II, Miracles: Mr. Canton and Lady Rose. All these films feature fast, tightly choreographed fight scenes and dangerous stunts. While filming The Armour of God Jackie fell from a tree and hit his head on a rock causing a hole in his skull, a wound which he carries to this day.
Numerous hits followed cementing Jackie's position as Hong Kong's premier action star. In the mid 1980's Jackie formed his own production company "Golden Way", which in addition to Jackie's own movies, has produced such films as Stanley Kwan's "Rouge".
Jackie continued to make hits throughout the 90's, despite competition from more Hong Kong and American films. Jackie's films have taken on different directions, including teaming with action star Michelle Khan (Yeoh) in 1992's Police Story III: Supercop, and taking a more dramatic turn in 1993's Crime Story, based on the true story of a Hong Kong detective. In 1994, he starred in the film Drunken Master II, an in name only sequel which returned him to his early film making days. The final fight scene took months to film, and the result was spectacular. The film broke all box office records for Hong Kong, and reinvigorated Jackie's career. Taking a chance, American film company New Line Cinema bought the rights to distribute Jackie's next film in the United States. Titled Rumble in the Bronx, the film opened in February 1996. Heavily promoted by New Line, the film opened to excellent reviews and went to #1 at the box office the week it debuted. The film created a huge impact finally exposing the American pub lic to martial arts moviemaking of a caliber they had never seen before, and winning Jackie Chan legions of new fans. Jackie had finally broken into the American market and was on his way to becoming a household name.
Following the success of Rumble in the Bronx, New line bought rights to Chan's successive works, while Miramax films bought up Jackie's recent 90's work to distribute in the U.S. Later on, he got another US box office hit with co-star Chris Tucker, with the action comedy Rush Hour. Then followed another US movie with Owen Wilson, Shanghai Noon. Meanwhile making US movies, Jackie always returned to Asia and made Hong Kong movies. He feels it's important to cover both markets, since he means Western and Asian fans have a too different taste to please both with one type of movie. He later returned with Chris Tucker to make Rush Hour 2, which broke all records and made over 200 million US dollars world wide.
Jackie has numerous projects ahead of him, and even more developing in his head. But since a lifetime doing stunts, fights and movies, Jackie's body is aching - he simply can't do the same amount of action he did a decade ago. That's why he wants to focus more on acting and possibly use computers to make stunts and action sequences safer.
Enjoying his newfound fame, Jackie has traveled to the United States often to promote his films, as well as continuing to promote his films around the world. After a lifetime in film, Jackie has developed his own unique style, impossible to capture in words, and visible only in the magic of his films. Concerning his place in film history, Jackie says- "I want to be remembered like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say 'Ah yes, they good'. Maybe one day they remember Jackie Chan that way. That's all".
1970's
1971 Little Tiger From Canton aka Master with Cracked Fingers
1973 Enter The Dragon
1975 Countdown In KungFu
1976 New Fist Of Fury
1976 Shaolin Wooden Men aka Shaolin Chamber of Death
1976 To Kill With Intrigue
1976 The Killer Meteors
1977 Snake In The Eagle's Shadow
1977 Snake & Crane Of Shaolin
1977 Fist Of Death
1977 Magnificent Bodyguards
1978 Spiritual Kung Fu
1978 Dragon Fist
1979 Fantasy Mission Force
1979 The Fearless Hyena
1980's
1980 All In The Family
1980 The Young Master 1980 Half A loaf of Kung Fu
1980 Battle Creek Brawl aka The Big Brawl
1981 The Cannonball Run
1982 Dragon Lord
1983 Winners And Sinners
1983 Project A
1983 Fearless Hyena Part II
1984 Wheels On Meals aka Spartan X
1984 Cannonball Run II
1985 Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars
1985 The Protector
1985 Police Story
1985 My Lucky Stars
1986 Heart Of The Dragon aka First Mission
1986 Armour Of God aka Tough Guy
1987 Project A II
1987 Dragons Forever
1988 Police Story II
1989 Mr. Canton And Lady Rose aka Miracles
1990's
1990 Island On Fire
1991 Armour Of God II aka Operation Condor
1992 Twin Dragons
1992 Police Story III : Supercop
1992 City Hunter
1993 Crime Story
1994 Drunken Master II
1995 Thunderbolt
1995 Rumble In The Bronx
1996 Mr. Nice Guy
1996 Police Story IV : First Strike
1997 Who Am I
1997 Burn Hollywood Burn
1998 Rush Hour
1999 Gorgeous
2000's
2000 Shanghai Noon
2001 Accidental Spy
2001 Rush Hour 2
2002 The Highbinder
2002 The Tuxedo
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