Occupation: Actor, Director, Screenwriter, Producer, Singer, Stunt choreographer
Date of Birth: April 7, 1954
Place of Birth: Hong Kong, China


I look at Bruce Lee film. When he kick high, I kick low. When he not smiling, always smiling. He can one-punch break the wall; after I break the wall, I hurt. I do the funny face!

With several hit movies already in national release, JACKIE CHAN's conquest of America is well underway.

While Chan continues to be a top draw outside North America, his popularity in America is growing rapidly. He has become the hero of an American comic book miniseries; the star of his own Saturday morning cartoon and Sony Playstation game; the recipient of an MTV Movie Awards Lifetime Achievement Honour; and a recipient of Hollywood's ultimate honor: Last January he left the prints of his feet and hands (and nose) in the sidewalk in front of Hollywood's famous Chinese Theatre.

As The Hollywood Reporter put it in their May 6, 1997, issue honoring Chan's achievements: "The Master is coming to Hollywood. Or, rather, Hollywood is coming to the Master."

International recognition of Chan's talents has come in response to a career that is resolutely home-grown. Over the last two decades Jackie Chan has become, in the words of Time Magazine's Richard Corliss, "the world's most popular movie star" by making films his way for his own adoring public in Asia's lively, unruly, surprising film capitol, Hong Kong.

Despite recent events in Hong Kong, Jackie Chan Fan Clubs all over the world still send pilgrims to the sets of his films. Chan often writes, directs and produces projects using equipment rented from companies he created to improve the technical quality of Hong Kong filmmaking. In addition, stuntmen who belong to the Jackie Chan Stuntmen's Association work in the films, as do actors supplied by his own casting and modeling agency.

Inspired by great film clowns like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, Chan has invented a unique style of film combining humor and death-defying stunts which he has carried to extravagant heights that American films are only now attempting -- often with the help of former Chan collaborators like director John Woo (Face/Off), Kirk Wong (The Big Hit), Tsui Hark (Double Team), Stanley Tong (Mister Magoo) and actress Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies).

A superb martial artist and acrobat, Chan has built his legend by putting his life on the line for his movies. In the montage of outtakes which typically ends his films, fans see the proof that Jackie Chan is still his own most amazing special effect.

Indentured at age seven to the Chinese Opera Research School, Chan learned through ten years of nineteen-hour days the rigorous discipline of the Perking Opera, which encompasses acting, singing, dance, mime, acrobatics and a variety of martial arts.

Upon graduation he went to work at the Shaw Brothers studios, where after two years his training and determination paid off with a promotion from stunt man to stunt coordinator. Watching Chan direct stuntmen, a producer spotted his talent and gave him his first adult role in Little Tiger from Canton (1971).

After years of films that afforded little scope for his real abilities, 1978's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master gave Chan the freedom to create the genre of kung fu comedy, which transformed the Hong Kong film industry. In 1980 Jackie Chan directed his first film, The Young Master, inaugurating his long association with producer Raymond Chow, whose Golden Harvest Films made all of Chan's subsequent films.

The runaway success of The Young Master prompted Chow to bring Chan to the U.S. to star in The Big Brawl and as a guest star opposite the likes of Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore and Farrah Fawcett in The Cannonball Run.

Based on his experiences with American filmmaking techniques, Chan returned home determined to improve Hong Kong cinema. This became evident in Project A (1983), a period action-comedy which ends with his first tribute to the American silent comics who were beginning to influence his work: a high-risk re-enactment of Harold Lloyd's clock-face finale in Safety Last.

Chan returned to the U.S. twice as an actor in Cannonball Run 2 and The Protector before he was honored by the New York Film Festival's selection of his 1986 Police Story. His direction of the sequels to Project A and Police Story, and 1986's lavish The Armour of God was acclaimed by American critics increasingly enamoured of Hong Kong cinema.

The conquest of Hollywood by Chan was now in full swing. A turning point came when he starred in Rumble in the Bronx (1994), a Hong Kong production filmed in Canada which was picked up for U. S. distribution by New Line Cinema. The success of Rumble helped launch a series of successful American releases for Chan.

In addition to the hugely successful releases of Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon, Ballantine Books has recently published an autobiography titled “I Am Jackie Chan.”