Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Jackie Chan

Top 10

Astonishing Facts about Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and stuntman known for his slapstick acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, and innovative stunts, which he typically performs himself.

The real-life superhero, Jackie Chan, is one of the most popular action film stars of all time, having received fame stars on the Hong Kong Avenue of Stars and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He has been acting since the 1960s, performing in more than 150 films.

With a kick, a punch and a goofy smile, let’s jump into the top 10 astonishing facts about Jackie Chan;

1. Interesting family secrets

A Tale of Three Cities poster – IMDb

Jackie was born on 7 April 1954 in British Hong Kong to Charles and Lee-Lee Chan. Growing up, he knew his father to be an actor, even casting Jackie in some of his own directorial features.

After his mother’s death in 2001 death, Jackie came to find out that his father was secretly a spy for the Chinese Nationalist Revolutionary Army. While his real name was Fang Daolang.

To add to it, his father met his mother when he arrested her for smuggling opium into China. Later, Chan changed his Chinese name to Fang Shilong, since his father’s original surname was Fang.

The film Tale of Three Cities tells the real love story of Jackie Chan’s parents.

2. How he became known as Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan – Flickr

Chan was named Chan Kong-sang by his parents, Charles and Lee-Lee Chan. His parents nicknamed him Pao-pao (“Cannonball”) because the energetic child was always rolling around.

In 1960 Chan attended the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera School run by Master Yu Jim-yuen. He trained rigorously eventually becoming part of the Seven Little Fortunes, a performance group made up of the school’s best students, thus gaining the stage name Yuen Lo, in homage to his master.

Later in 1976 Jackie joined his parents in Australia where he worked as a construction worker. A fellow builder named Jack took Chan under his wing, thus earning Chan the nickname of “Little Jack,” later shortened to “Jackie”, which has stuck with him ever since.

3. Jackie Chan was supposed to be the next Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee – Flickr

Since Jackie Chan was good at both acting and martial arts, and was already very popular in the Hong Kong movie industry, everyone thought Jackie Chan would be the next Bruce Lee.

In fact, when Bruce Lee suddenly died in 1973 Lo Wei, a Hong Kong film director best known for launching the martial arts film careers of Bruce Lee, offer Jackie an acting role in his film.

Lo planned to model Jackie after Bruce Lee with the film New Fist of Fury. Jackie’s stage name was changed to “becoming the dragon” to emphasize his similarity to Bruce Lee, whose stage name meant “Lee the Little Dragon” in Chinese.

As Jackie was not Bruce Lee, these movies were not successful. Fortunately, Jackie was able to develop his own artistic voice, blending the martial arts with physical comedy.

4. Crediting Jacky Chan with a new genre of film

Jackie Chan in the Forbidden Kingdom – Flickr

Jackie Chan is credited with the creation of the Kung Fu comedy genre, or at least having made the genre popular with his many blockbusters.

Prior to Bruce Lee’s films, Kung Fu films introduced gritty storylines with an equivalent style of violent, yet beautiful action, providing the Chinese people with a down to earth hero.

However, after Lee’s death, the Kung Fu genre struggled a lot with terrible look-alikes and cheap rip-offs. Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu comedy style provided an antidote.

The new, unique style gave moviegoers the opportunity to watch an action film without being constantly and distastefully reminded of Bruce Lee, whilst letting new stars step out of his considerable shadow.

5. Inspired by the silent movie era

Charlie Chaplin – Flickr

For the majority of his early acting career, many people wanted Jacky Chan to follow in the footsteps of Bruce Lee, but Jackie was more inspired by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

He told the New York Times in 1995, “I wanted to be like a Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but all the martial arts directors I worked with wanted me to copy Bruce Lee.”

Chan was inspired to perform his own stunts because of Chaplin and Buster Keaton’s own insistence to put themselves in danger for the sake of film.

6. Jackie Chan has incurred more injuries than you can imagine

Jackie Chan – Flickr

Before being a success movie star known to perform his own stunts, he was a stuntman and as a result he has suffered through at least 100 on-set injuries. He holds the Guinness World Record for “Most Stunts by a Living Actor”.

A good handful of these incidents would turn out to be near-death experiences, such as the time he fell from a building as one of the stunts in the movie Fists of Fury, setting a record for the highest fall in Chinese movies.

He also got a permanent hole in his skull from a stunt in the Armour of God and almost drowned on the set of his latest thriller Vanguard.

7. Jackie Chan is a popular singer in Asia

Jackie Chan singing – Wikimedia Commons

For the majority of us when we think of Jackie, we picture fighting scenes with Chan flying in the air however, Jackie is an operatically trained vocalist.

He began producing records professionally in the 1980s and has released 20 albums on which he sings in multiple languages; Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Taiwanese and English.

Jackie sings the theme songs of many of his films, beginning with “Kung Fu Fighting Man” for 1980s The Young Master and, later, the Cantonese-language main theme to his Police Story movies, “Hero Story,” which the Royal Hong Kong Police would use for recruitment advertisements in the 1994.

8. Venturing on his own

Rob-B-Hood poster – IMDb

Jackie became frustrated with Hollywood over the limited range of roles and lack of control over the filmmaking process.

In response, Jackie started his own film production company, JCE Movies Limited (Jackie Chan Emperor Movies Limited) in association with Emperor Multimedia Group (EMG).

His films have since featured an increasing number of dramatic scenes while continuing to succeed at the box office. In New Police Story, he portrayed a character suffering from alcoholism and mourning his murdered colleagues.

To shed the image of a “nice guy”, Chan played an antihero for the first time in Rob-B-Hood starring as Thongs, a burglar with gambling problems

9. Going beyond for his students

Jackie Chan in The Fearless Hyena, 1979 – Wikimedia

As part of Golden Way, Jackie created a school for stuntmen, making the company a one-stop shop for creating action movies. Through the stunt school, he is able to pass his knowledge along to the next generation.

Jackie also provides full medical coverage for his students, unlike majority stunt schools which require its students to carry their own health insurance.

10. An important lesson to learn from Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan – Flickr

The story of Jackie Chan highly emphasizes that wherever you see success, there is a history of failures. Yes, Jackie Chan has ended up making many hit movies, but it is also important to remember he also made many flops.

His acting career started with him being an extra and stunt double in Kung Fu lifts. When he came to the big screen, he was forced to imitate and act like Bruce Lee, which resulted in him making movies that performed poorly and received harsh critics from moviegoers.

Despite all this, he was able to fight and get to be the action-comedy star that we love and adore today.