That man was Jackie Chan.
Jackie Chan’s first movie wasn’t an action film. It was a tearjerker. Born Chan Kong-sang in 1954, Jackie was the son of poor parents who worked for the French ambassador in Hong Kong. As a hyperactive child, he was enrolled at the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera school run by the brutal Master Yu Jim-yuen. There, he endured ten-hour days of acrobatics, singing, martial arts, and, most importantly, pain.
His first starring vehicle was New Fist of Fury (1976), a quasi-sequel to Lee’s film. Jackie played a student avenging Bruce Lee’s character. The problem was catastrophic. The film forced Jackie into a grim, scowling, cold-blooded killer role. He wore tight bell-bottoms and a flat cap, trying to imitate Lee’s snarls and one-inch punches. But Jackie wasn’t intimidating; he was boyish and likable. When he tried to glare, he just looked constipated. The action was stiff, the story a carbon copy, and the film flopped hard. jackie chan first movies
This was the birth of “Jackie Chan comedy kung fu.” He got hit in the face, ran away, hid behind furniture, and used buckets, brooms, and ladders as weapons. The audience laughed with him, not at him. The film was a monster hit, breaking box office records in Hong Kong and Asia. Riding the wave, Yuen Woo-ping and Jackie immediately made Drunken Master (1978) the same year. This time, Jackie played the real-life folk hero Wong Fei-hung—but as a mischievous, disrespectful teenager who gets trained in the taboo “Drunken Boxing” by a vicious master. The final fight, where Jackie fights the killer “Thunderleg” while simulating drunkenness with staggering precision, is a masterpiece of physical storytelling.
That idea became Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978). Jackie played Chien Fu, a lowly, bullied orphan scrubbing floors at a martial arts school. There was no brooding. No revenge. He was clumsy, cheerful, and cried easily. An old beggar (master Simon Yuen) teaches him “Snake Fist” style, and Jackie invents a goofy, improvised “Drunken Snake” technique to win the final fight. That man was Jackie Chan
These were the days of no safety gear. If a director wanted a child to jump from a roof onto a moving cart, the child did it or got hit with a cane back at the school. Jackie learned to fall before he learned to act. The breakthrough came when Jackie, now 17, was hired as a stuntman for Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury . This is where the famous story occurs. In the climactic fight at the Russian school, Bruce Lee’s character, Chen Zhen, kicks a man so hard he flies backward through a wooden doorway.
The choreography called for him to leap backward, crash through thin balsa-wood panels, and land on a mattress. But Bruce Lee was a perfectionist. The first two takes, Jackie’s timing was off. On the third take, Lee connected slightly harder than intended. Jackie flew through the door, landed on his neck, and was knocked unconscious for a few seconds. When he woke up, Bruce Lee was leaning over him, genuinely concerned. “Are you okay, kid?” Lee asked. Jackie, dizzy and ecstatic, said, “Yes, Mr. Lee! Again!” Born Chan Kong-sang in 1954, Jackie was the
At age seven, Master Yu loaned out a group of his “Seven Little Fortunes” (Jackie’s performance troupe) to a film studio. They were needed for a cameo in a black-and-white Cantonese opera film called Big and Little Wong Tin Bar (also known as The Seven Little Fortunes ).