成龍 The Jackie Chan Fansite

Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong on the 7th April 1954, and was the only child of parents Charles and Lee-Lee Chan.  He was named Chan Kong-Sang, which means ' Born in Hong Kong '  but his mum nicknamed him Pao-Pao which means ' cannonball ' as he was always rolling around.

His mother had a difficult birth, and reports say that he had to be removed surgically and weighed 12lbs, this may also be another good reason for the nickname his mother gave him.  His father Charles, had to borrow money to pay for the operation as the family were so poor.

The family worked for the French Ambassador, and lived in the Ambassadors mansion in the exclusive district of Victoria Peak.  His father was a cook and his mother was the housekeeper.

Jackie was sent to the Nah-Hwa primary school on Hong Kong Island, but was not academically bright, he struggled and failed to pass primary 1.  His father noticed this, and enrolled Jackie at the Peking Opera School, he was now 7yrs old.

Jackie never did return to academic education, preferring to stay at the opera school, but even so he now speaks 7 languages.  He still finds it difficult to read or write though, and employs someone to write his scripts for him.

Eventually his father moved to Australia to work at the chinese embassy, his mother also left too to join Charles in Australia, leaving Jackie, now called Yuen Lo, at the opera school.  The training involved music, acrobatics and martial arts and would last anything up to 18 hrs a day.  Jackie was eventually adopted by the master of the school, Shu Master Yu Jan-Yuen.

Jackie was performing in public from an early age, and was in a troupe called ' The seven little Fortunes ' along with Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung and Yuen Wah,  all of which would go on to become well known names in their own right.

When Jackie was 8yrs he had a lucky break.  Although he had already made an appearance in a film called Painted Faces, he was cast in a film called Big and Little Wong Tin Bar.  He was to star with the great Taiwanese star Li Li-hua, who played his mother.  She really took a shine to Jackie, and had him appear in her next series of features.

While Jackie was at the school, he had studied many forms of Martial Arts, including hapkido, tae kwondo, judo and wing chung , but after leaving took to learning soccer, boxing, gambling and playing pool.  He would play in one of the many 24hr pool halls in Hong Kong, sometimes sleeping there in the halls.  These halls were the hang out for the Triads gang, who would try to recruit youngsters, but after seeing many of his friends join, and deal drugs, he decided to distance himself from the gangs.

Jackie then moved on to bowling, somewhere where the Triad gangs didn't hang out, and still Jackie refused to join them.  At one point the Triads tried to get involved in his film business, and Jackie famously challenged them to come and break up his office. Luckily, by then, Jackie was too famous to be touched, and since then he was known as Big brother, and won the hearts of the Hong Kong people.

Jackie was soon given a lead role in the film ' Master with Cracked Fingers ' , his inventive stunt work undoubtedly helped to secure this.  Although this film set the stage for many more, he was always in the shadow of Bruce Lee, and played an extra in both ' Enter the Dragon ' and ' Chinese Connection'.

Bruce Lee, however, died in 1973, and this left an opening for Jackie to move forward.

After some time appearing in Rumble in Hong Kong and Hand of Death, Jackie went to spend time with his parents in Australia.  This was where he eventually found the screen name he has now. ( his previous screen names included..Yuen Lo, Chen Yueng Lung and Sing Lung )

After returning to Hong Kong, he was signed up as the lead actor in Lo Wei's film company, as well as signing with Willy Chan, who is still his manager to this day.  In an attempt to make Jackie into the 'new' Bruce Lee, he made a film called ' Fist of Fury ' which was a failure, but after some more features with Lo Wei he was sent on loan to Ng See Huens seasonal films for snake eagles shadow.  This combined action and comedy, which showed a new strength for Jackie and was a real hit.  This was followed by another hit ' Drunken Master ' which was to break box office records and made Jackie a star across Asia.

Jackie now went on to co-direct and choreograph ' Fearless Hyena ' for Lo Wei, went on to direct Young Master on his own and then signed up to the Golden Harvest company, whose Raymond Chow had originally discovered Bruce Lee.  After being threatened by the Triads and Lo Wei, Jackie went to the US to make the film ' The Big Brawl '.  This was from the director and producers of ' Enter the Dragon '.  He then managed to join the star studded cast of the film, ' The cannonball Run '.

He was eventually bought out from Lo Wei for 10 million Hong Kong dollars, and he returned to learn directing and to create more fantastic stunts.

Jackie is also a stunt historian, and would explain how Hong Kong stuntmen would use traditional punches and kicks.  When Steve McQueens film ' The Sand Pebbles ' was filmed there, the Honk Kong pros learned a new style of fighting and hitting and also being hit. This lead to higher levels of stunt work, which would eventually be taken over by the American film industry.

While in the US, Jackie was to discover the works of Buster keaton and Harlod Lloyd, which made Jackie begin to concentrate more on the slapstick style of comedy.  His next attempt to break the American film market was 'The Protector' which was filmed in 1985 but a failure as it was deemed too mean.

The failure of this film took Jackie's next film ' Police Story ' back to Hong Kong, where films are cheaper to make and the stunts canbe more spectacular and death defying, due to cheaper insurance costs.  The film was spectacular and spawned another 3 sequels, and was then followed by 'Armour of God ' , which during this film, Jackie fell 20 feet, hit his head and fractured his skull, and was in a coma.

By the time 1994's Drunken Master 2 came along, Jackie had assembled his own team of stuntmen, cameramen and lighting people.  This was because he said there were far less injuries with a team of people that you know.

After filming 'Dead Heat' an illegal street racing film, came the hugely successful film ' Rumble in the Bronx ' which reached number 1 in America. This was followed by ' First Strike ' in which he starred as a cop, chasing a criminal from Russia to Australia.  He then remained in Australia to make the film 'Mr Nice Guy' with the actor Sammo Hung, playing a chef who helps out a TV reporter being threatened by drug lords.  This was then followed by 'Who am I? ' .

After making ' Rumble in the Bronx' Jackie teamed up with Chris Tucker to make the hugely popular film 'Rush Hour'. Jackie starred as a cop in Hong Kong, who busts open a smuggling ring.  The film was on a budget of $35 million but actually took $141 million at the box office and was a hit.

After a couple of failed Hong Kong films in 1999, he went back to the US and very quickly had more success with 'Shanghai Noon'.  This was set in 1881 and saw a Chinese princess ( Lucy Liu ) fleeing to America, to escape a forced marriage, where she is kidnapped and held to ransom.  It was in this film that he paired up with Owen Wilson, who plays a hugely ammusing bank robber.

His next film was another Bond style film called 'The accidental Spy' made by the company Golden Harvest and he remained with them til 1998, even though there was a slump in the Hong Kong cinema, but left when his commitments in America became too great.

For the next 2 years he was in Hollywood, and made 'Rush Hour 2'  a film with a $90 million budget, that took $226 million at the box office.  He then went on to make 'The Tuxedo'  with the actress Jennnifer Love Hewitt.  This was then followed by the sequel to 'Shanghai Noon' called 'Shanghai Knights', again with Owen Wilson, which was again another hit.  He then moved onto make the film 'The Medallion' with Julian Sands, Lee Evans and Claire Forlani.

In 2004 he starred inthe re-make of Jules Verne's 'Around the world in eighty days'.  The film was altered to Make Jackies character, Passepartout, the hero.  This was followed by the long awaited 'New Police Story', which this time was without Maggie Cheung as May.  This was followed by 'Time Breaker',  and ' The Blade of the Rose'  which was the sequel to ' The Twins Effect' and featured the screen debut of his son Jaycee Fong Cho-ming.

This was inevitably folllowed by 'Rush Hour 3'.

Jackie married Feng-Jiao Lin in 1983 and his son was born in the same year. He was also reported to have had an affair with the former Miss Asia, Elaine Ng, with whom he has a daughter.  After many years , his father informed him that his real name was not Chan but Fung.  He also had two half-sisters in Australia and two half-brothers in China.  It was because of this that he made the documentary titled Traces Of Dragon: Jackie Chan And His Lost Family.

He then began, in 2004, to divide his time between film and charity work. He was named Philanthropist for Children in China after making a massive donation, and took part in a charity car race before the Shanghai grand prix.  He has also been named as the goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and the joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS, visited Cambodia to help with the clearing of landmines and then onto Korea and Singapore.  He has helped to plant forests in China and to help promote care of the environment.  He has also made large donations to Self-Help For The Elderly project and Alzheimer's Centre he'd earlier set up in San Francisco. He set up the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation Scholarship, then bought a 50-acre plot in Chun Ping, China, hoping to open a school for stunt-people of all nationalities.

2004 also saw Jackie get his hand prints on Hong Kong's avenue of stars, alongside Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung and many others.