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Actor, director, producer. Born April 7, 1954, in Hong Kong,
China. When his parents moved to Australia to find new jobs, the
seven-year-old Chan was left behind to study at the Chinese
Opera Research Institute, a Hong Kong boarding school. For the
next 10 years, Chan studied martial arts, drama, acrobatics, and
singing, and was subjected to stringent discipline, including
corporal punishment for poor performance. He appeared in his
first film, the Cantonese feature Big and Little Wong Tin Bar
(1962), when he was only eight, and went on to appear in a
number of musical films.
Upon his graduation in 1971, Chan found work as an acrobat and a
movie stuntman, most notably in Fist of Fury (1972), starring
Hong Kong’s resident big-screen superstar, Bruce Lee. For that
film, he reportedly completed the highest fall in the history of
the Chinese film industry, earning the respectful notice of the
formidable Lee, among others.
After Lee’s tragic, unexpected death in 1973, Chan was singled
out as a likely successor of his mantle as the king of Hong Kong
cinema. To that end, he starred in a string of kung fu movies
with Lo Wei, a producer and director who had worked with Lee.
Most were unsuccessful, and the collaboration ended in the late
1970s. By that time, Chan had decided that he wanted to break
out of the Lee mold and create his own image. Blending his
martial arts abilities with an impressive nerve—he insisted on
performing all of his own stunts—and a sense of screwball
physical comedy reminiscent of one of his idols, Buster Keaton,
Chan found his own formula for cinematic gold.
A year after the release of his first bona fide hit, Snake in
the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), Chan took the Hong Kong film world by
storm with his first so-called “kung fu comedy,” the now-classic
Drunken Master (1978). Subsequent hits such as The Fearless
Hyena (1979), Half a Loaf of Kung Fu (1980), and The Young
Master (1980) confirmed Chan’s star status; the latter film
marked his first with Golden Harvest, Lee’s old production
company and the leading film studio in Hong Kong. Before long,
Chan had become the highest-paid actor in Hong Kong and a huge
international star throughout Asia. He exerted total control
over most of his films, often taking charge of duties ranging
from producing to directing to performing the theme songs.
In the early 1980s, Chan tried his luck in Hollywood, with
little success. He starred in the Golden Harvest-produced The
Big Brawl (1980), which flopped; he also had a small supporting
role opposite Burt Reynolds in the disappointing ensemble comedy
Cannonball Run (1982) and its equally mediocre 1984 sequel.
Back in Hong Kong, Chan’s star only rose throughout the 1980s,
as he produced impressive action-comedies such as Project A
(1983), Police Story (1985), and Armor of God (1986), and the
hit period film Mr. Canton and Lady Rose (1989), a clever remake
of Frank Capra’s 1961 film A Pocketful of Miracles. By that
time, however, Chan was far more than a movie star—he was a
one-man film industry. In 1986, he formed his own production
company, Golden Way.
He also founded a modeling/casting agency, Jackie’s Angels, in
order to recruit talent for his films. During the filming of
Police Story, so many stuntmen were injured that none would
agree to work with Chan again; in response, he founded the
Jackie Chan Stuntmen Association, whose members he trained
personally and paid their medical bills. For his part, Chan
claims to have broken every bone in his body at least once while
performing stunts. In 1986, during the filming of Armor of God,
he fractured his skull after falling over 40 feet while
attempting to jump from the top of a building and land on a tree
branch below.
In the early 1990s, Chan broadened his range even more, turning
in a rare dramatic performance in the melodramatic Crime Story
(1993). He also made several sequels to his hits Police Story
and Drunken Master. As one of the biggest international box
office stars, his popularity in America was limited to the
savviest filmgoers. Chan’s profile began a meteoric rise in the
mid-1990s, however, when a series of events combined to bring
him to the attention of a wider American audience.
In 1995, Chan created his own comic book character, the central
figure in Jackie Chan’s Spartan X, a series that hit newsstands
in both Asia and the U.S. That same year, newly anointed
directing sensation Quentin Tarantino, fresh off the success of
Pulp Fiction (1994), presented Chan with a Lifetime Achievement
Award at the MTV Movie Awards (the admiring Tarantino reportedly
threatened to boycott the ceremony if Chan did not receive the
award).
In 1996, New Line Cinema and Golden Harvest jointly released
Rumble in the Bronx, Chan’s fifth English-language (dubbed)
release but his first hit in America. The film grossed $10
million in its first weekend of release, shooting to No. 1 at
the box office; its success prompted the American debut of two
previous Chan films, Crime Story and Drunken Master II.
After two less successful efforts, Jackie Chan’s First Strike
(1997) and Mr. Nice Guy (1998), Chan had another big box-office
hit with Rush Hour (also 1998), an American-produced
action-comedy. In Rush Hour, Chan employed his English-language
skills as a Chinese police officer on an exchange program in the
U.S. who is partnered with a streetwise Los Angeles cop, played
by the rising comedian Chris Tucker. In 2000, Chan starred in
Shanghai Noon, another crossover comedy-action film set in the
Old West and co-starring Owen Wilson and Lucy Liu.
The following summer, Chan reteamed with Tucker for the smash
hit sequel Rush Hour 2, for which the action star earned a hefty
$15 million plus a percentage of the record-breaking box-office
haul. In 2002, Chan costarred with Jennifer Love Hewitt in The
Tuxedo, an action comedy about a taxi driver who receives
special powers when he puts on his boss's tux. That same year,
he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was honored
with the Taurus Award for best action movie star at the World
Stunt Awards.
Chan has one son, J.C., with his estranged wife, the Taiwanese
actress Lin Feng-Chiao.
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