Jackie Chan was born Chan Kong-sang (which means "Born in Hong Kong" Chan), April 7th, 1954, the Year of the Horse. Jackie was the only son of Charles and Lee-lee Chan, who were very poor and worked for the French ambassador to Hong Kong. Charles was a cook and a handyman, while Lee-Lee worked as a housekeeper. They lived in a room in the mansion of the French ambassador on the exclusive slopes of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.
Most babies are born nine months after being conceived. Jackie, on the other hand, stuck around an extra three months, so his mother had to have surgery to bring him into the world. Because Chan Kong-sang weighed 12 pounds at birth, his mother nicknamed him "Pao-pao", wich is Chinese for "cannonball". The bill for his mother's surgery came to HK$500 (about $26 US), and his parents' savings didn't come close to covering the cost. But the lady doctor who performed the surgery approached Jackie's nervous father with a deal. She had no kids of her own, she explained to him, and she knew he and Jackie's mother, Lee-lee, had no money. If Charles would allow her to "adopt" him, she would be willing to pay for the costs of the surgery and his mother's hospital stay. But Jackie was his parents' only son. He was their symbol of their new start in Hong Kong. Charles' friends lent him the money to pay off the hospital dept, and thanked the doctor for her generous offer.
In 1960, Charles had to move to Australia to work in the Chinese embassy there. It was at this time that Jackie was first enrolled in the Peking Opera school. Chan was to study there from the age of six/seven until the age of seventeen -ten years. Jackie's master at the school was Master Yu Jim-Yuen, to whom Jackie owes his entire career. There Jackie's name became Yuen Lo.
At the school, students were taught traditional Chinese arts of performing, singing, acting, and especially acrobatic and martial arts. Any number of traditional Chinese martial arts were taught, along with weaponry, stick fighting and the like. Students were forced to put in eighteen hour days and subjected to grueling physical demands, for example, holding headstands or stances for hours at a time. Beatings were very common. After some years, when Jackie's mother joined his father in Australia, Master Yu adopted Jackie, making him his godson. Jackie was invited to join "The Seven Little Fortunes", a performing group at the opera which performed at several locations in Hong Kong.
Many of Jackie's modern day co-stars also came from the Peking Opera School. Some of them are huge stars in Hong Kong today, including Samo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Yeun Wah -- the list is long! Samo Hung and Yen Biao have co-starred with Jackie several times, including the movies Winners and Sinners (Five Lucky Stars), Project A, My Lucky Stars, and Twinkle, Twinkly Lucky Stars to name just a few.
Jackie's first onscreen appearance came in 1962, when a director offered him a small role as a child actor in the Cantonese film Big and little Wong Tin-Bar. Jackie would go on to appear in several films, first as a child actor and then as a stuntman, before the age of seventeen.
Jackie the stuntman...
At seventeen, Jackie left the Peking Opera and found small roles in films. His first leading role was in 1971's Master with the Cracked Fingers, a fairly standard tale of revenge. In 1973 Jackie worked as in extra in two films that starred the biggest name in Kung-Fu movies at the time -Bruce Lee. In Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection), Bruce kicks Jackie through a building wall. Apparently, Jackie thew himself through the wall with no padding and with such vigor that Bruce was forced to ask if the young stuntman was all right.
Jackie was all right, and later that year appeared in Bruce Lee's breakthrough classic Enter the Dragon, again as one of the numerous people Bruce fights off. Although only on the screen briefly, Jackie's face can clearly be seen.
In 1976, after appearing in the film Hand of death (Countdown in Kung Fu), directed by a young John Woo, Jackie went to Australia a short while to be with his parents. He returned to Hong Kong the same year, and was signed as a lead actor by the Lo Wei film company. This is when Willy Chan became Jackie's best friend and personal manager, wich he still is today.
Jackie, who had been acting at this time under the name "Chen Yueng Lung" was renamed "Sing Lung" (means "already a dragon" or "become the dragon"), and in 1976 made his first film for Lo Wei, titled New Fist of Fury, a sequel to Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection). The film cast Jackie in a Bruce Lee type role, and although Jackie's martial arts talent are exhibited, Jackie was not comfortable acting in Bruce's shadow. Jackie would go on to make a number of films for Wei, none of which were huge sucesses.
How Chan Kong-sang (Yuen Lo) became Jackie Chan
In 1976, after joining his parents in Australia, he decided he had to work to earn some money while he was there. Therefore, one of his father's friends, a guy named Jack, took Yuen Lo to a construction site to work. Jack knew that Kong-sang wasn't a name the Australian workers would get an easy grip on. "Aw, hell, his name's Jack, too," he said to his fellow workers. Over the months Jackie stayed there, "Jack" became "Jackie". And that's how Jackie Chan was born.
New try at Seasonal Films...
In 1978, Jackie was loaned to director Ng See Huen's Seasonal Film company for the film Snake in Eagle's Shadow. Unlike his previous films, the film had a light, humorous tone, better acting, and a better story. Free of the burden of trying to be like the late Bruce Lee, Jackie's expressive features, timing, and great comedic ability began to show themselves. The film was a hit in Hong Kong, and the cast and director reunited shortly thereafter to make the even more successful Drunken Master, which broke all the box office records in Hong Kong at the time. Jackie finally began to go off in a different direction, away from the style of Bruce Lee, and into his own clowning Kung-Fu style.
