Jackie Chan no longer knows what pain feels like. Broken nose, broken hand, broken foot: “If you often remember this pain, you no longer dare to do many movements,” said the Chinese martial arts actor in an interview with “Harper’s Bazaar” magazine in January. When he injured himself while filming years ago, the director asked him if it didn’t hurt. “I said, I already forgot,” said the Hong Kong-born star of kung fu films like “Drunken Master” and action flicks like “Rush Hour.”
After decades in show business, more than 80 films as an actor and numerous more as a director, Chan is probably one of the most famous Chinese people in the world. Even though he’s celebrating his 70th birthday this Sunday (April 7th), he’s still not thinking about quitting. “There are still ten films in the future waiting for me to make them,” he said. Chan always wanted to be an actor who could also fight – not the other way around. Because life as an action hero is short, he explained.
Worked up from the bottom
Born as Chen Gangsheng (roughly: Hong Kong-born Chen), he grew up in poor circumstances. His parents worked for a diplomat as a cook and maid in a wealthy area of Hong Kong. A job in Australia finally lured his father to Canberra. Little Jackie stayed behind and from then on attended a strict acting boarding school. The school trained him in martial arts with rising early in the morning at five o’clock, tough training sessions and punishments. “Terrible,” he described the time decades later on a British talk show.
But the effort should pay off. He left the drama academy in 1971 at the age of 17 and worked his way up the Hong Kong film scene as a stuntman. Despite fierce competition, he managed to appear in films with kung fu legend Bruce Lee, who was known for his serious fighting style. Chan, on the other hand, was characterized by amusing interludes and consciously developed his own fighting style, in which he often appeared staggering and drunk. In Hong Kong he made films like on an assembly line. The road to Hollywood was initially difficult.
Hole in the head
The Chinese did many of his own stunts – many injuries resulted. For example, since “The Right Arm of the Gods,” Chan has had a plastic-sealed hole in his head after falling from a tree while filming. He missed almost no part of his body when he pointed his finger at past broken bones on Conan O’Brien’s US late-night show. That was in the year 2000.
At this point, Chan had finally achieved his big Hollywood breakthrough. With the action comedy “Rush Hour,” for example, the martial arts star landed on the big stage. He also achieved great fame with “Rumble in the Bronx”, “Karate Kid” and “Shanghai Noon”. His hard work allowed the award-winning Chinese to appear again and again on the lists of highest-paid actors.
Turbulent personal life
Chan’s private life was almost as turbulent as in his kung fu scenes. In the book “Never Grow Up,” he described his former self as a “total idiot.” He drove drunk and once crashed two luxury cars in one day. As he became more famous, he admitted, he spent a lot of money on alcohol, gambling and prostitutes.
In 1982 he married a Taiwanese actress, with whom he has a son. At the end of the 1990s, Chan had an affair that resulted in a daughter. Years later, son Jaycee Chan greatly embarrassed his father when he was arrested for drug possession in Beijing in 2014. Jackie Chan, whom Chinese police named years earlier as an “ambassador” for a drug campaign, came under pressure and later publicly acknowledged his anger over the incident.
Wannabe communist
What often gets lost in the international spotlight is that Chan is also an ardent patriot. He never made a secret of his admiration for China’s Communist Party. “I envy you for being Party members,” he said at a meeting organized by the Chinese Film Association in 2021. “I also want to become a party member,” he added. However, according to reports, users on the Internet later joked that Chan might not be suitable because of his past scandals.
Between 2013 and 2023, he was a member of the Political Consultative Conference that advises China’s National People’s Congress – the non-freely elected parliament under the autocracy of the Communist Party. He no longer appears on the committee’s list, which could be due to his age. However, he hasn’t run out of slogans: The fact that China has become so strong is due to the success of each individual and the leadership within the party, he said in the “Harper’s Bazaar” interview. Chan is very popular in China. He has been pushing forward his social commitment for years and has been committed to helping children in need through the UN Children’s Fund Unicef.