Jackie Chan
The best action star of all time
Here's a time line of this legendary actor life:
- 1954 - Jackie Chan, originally Chan Kong-sang, (born April 7, 1954, Hong Kong)
- 1960 - The family moved to Canberra, Australia, but the following year his parents sent him back to Hong Kong.
- 1961 - 1971 - studied acrobatics, singing, martial arts, and mime—skills that launched him into a position with a professional tumbling troupe and landed him bit roles as a child actor and, later, as a stuntman.
- 1978 - Chan utilized his own form of bumbling physical comedy in his first successful films, She xing diao shou (Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow) and Zui quan (Drunken Master). He then wrote and directed as well as starred in Xiao quan guai zhao (1979; The Fearless Hyena).
- 1980s - In the early 1980s, at the time when he was making an unsuccessful foray into English-language cinema, he moved beyond traditional martial arts period movies to modern action-adventure films, such as ‘A’ jihua (1983; Project A) and Jing cha gu shi (1985: Police Story), along with their sequels.
- 1990s - Chan finally broke through into the American market. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the cable network MTV in 1995, and the following year his blockbuster Hung fan kui (1995; Rumble in the Bronx) was released in the United States, along with some of his other classic Hong Kong titles. Chan starred alongside American comedian Chris Tucker in Rush Hour (1998), which enjoyed a great deal of success and launched two sequels (2001 and 2007).
- 1998 - founded the Jackie Chan Charitable Organization in 1998, which, among other projects, offers scholarships to Hong Kong youths, and he worked as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.
- 2000s - Chan continued to work both within the Hollywood system (though he disliked the limitations it placed on actors) and in Hong Kong cinema.
- 2016 - became the first Chinese actor to receive an honorary Academy Award, which recognized his “distinctive international career.”
Tom Hanks honors Jackie Chan at the 2016 Governors Awards
"The ads all call me fearless, but that’s just publicity. Anyone who thinks I’m not scared out of my mind whenever I do one of my stunts is crazier than I am."
– Jackie Chan