An accomplished writer, director, producer, star and stuntman, Rush Hour 3's Jackie Chan has fought hard to do things his way. Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius meets Eastern action's number one son.

At the tender age of six and a half, when Chan Kwon-Sang was deemed old enough to look after himself, his father packed him off to train at the Peking Opera School. "Like the school in Fame," remembers Chan, 53, "they taught much more than opera, and we had lots of different classes: singing, acting, jumping, kicking, stick fighting, knife fighting, gymnastics, acrobatics. It was very tough. A lot of students dropped out. We started with a hundred, and one by one they gave up. Sometimes the teachers would beat us for no reason. We trained from five in the morning until late at night, and I admit I wanted to leave as well. But my parents had moved to Australia and I had nowhere to go, so I stayed there for ten years. Now I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot from being there, and it trained me to be independent. Education is the most important thing. Without it, I might have ended up washing dishes for a living."

Finding work as a stuntman on an endless parade of low budget martial arts movies, Jackie Chan worked with Bruce Lee on Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, dying for the camera on a daily basis. "At the time he was my hero, a very big star," says Chan. "Wherever Bruce Lee went, people surrounded him, and he had a hundred 'yes' men too. A friend of mine, someone who studied at the Academy with me, actually doubled for Lee, because Bruce knew kicking and punching but couldn't do the somersault kick. Later, when the movie came out, the audience were clapping and cheering my Kung Fu brother, but they thought it was all Bruce, as we didn't even have a small credit."

Could this be why Chan still does all his own stunts, to avoid taking credit for someone else's work? "Not really," he says, characteristically adding, "I just wanted to be outstanding. I doubled for many actors for many years, and I know what to do - what kind of kick, what kind of jump - so now I design each fight for myself, and because of this I'm always the best man for the job."

If you want a job done properly, as the saying goes, you have to do it yourself - but in this instance there's no end of danger involved. As anyone who has seen a Chan movie can confirm, the out-takes accompanying the closing credits usually include footage of Jackie's latest near-death experience. "Every time I get hurt in a stunt, it scares me a little bit, but as soon as I get back on the set I'm back to normal," says Chan, the star of Rush Hour 3, now available to add to your list.

"I have to do all my own stunts. I don't know why. I don't know what kind of energy pushes me continually to do these kinds of things. I think about Christopher Reeve and it frightens me - I don't want to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. That's why I eventually plan to retire from acting. All those years were good enough, I have a lot of happy memories, but how far can I go? Eventually, I'd like to direct full time, and write, and produce. I'm looking for new talent to continue my job."

Creative control is of prime importance to Chan, who knows what it feels like to be messed around by clueless American directors. "Though I really enjoyed working with Brett Ratner on all three Rush Hour movies, a lot of US directors don't know what they're doing. Some of them can direct but they don't know action; some of them know action, but they really can't direct. That's why I usually prefer to do it myself. In America, they have a director, an action director, a scriptwriter, a lighting director, an editing director - too many directors! Sometimes it works, if you've planned well enough in advance, but it just doesn't work for me. So often I write, direct and edit for myself.

Taking a cue from Frank Sinatra, Chan does things his way. He always has and he always will, and that's the secret of his success. "I'm lucky I made it so big," he admits, "because there are a lot of other fighters out there." The difference was, "everybody was doing the Bruce Lee style, and I wanted to do the opposite. "He kicked high, so I kicked low. When he's a superhero, I'm a normal guy - that's my personality. I love action, but I hate violence. A lot of children see my movies, so I add a lot of comedy to balance out the action. In my movies there's no sex, no make love scene, no dirty words, no dirty violence - always clean, no blood, always happy-go-lucky."

Jackie Chan Filmography

What did you think of this article?
Click here to contact our editorial team.