he took off to spend time with his parents in Australia. This was where he found his present screen name, having previously been billed as Yuen Lo, Chen Yueng Lung and Sing Lung (meaning Already A Dragon). Taken down to work on a construction site by a friend of his dad’s, named Jack, he was asked for his name by his co-workers. Thinking they’d have trouble pronouncing it, his dad’s mate replied “He’s called Jack too”. So now he was Jackie Chan.

Returning to Hong Kong, he signed up as lead actor in Lo Wei’s film company, purveyors of fairly poor material (he also signed up with Willy Chan, still his manager to this day). First there was another attempt to make him the New Bruce, with the rather obviously titled New Fist Of Fury. Again, it was a wretched failure. After a few more features with Lo Wei, he was loaned to Ng See Huen’s Seasonal Films for Snake In Eagle’s Shadow. Combining comedy with furious action, this revealed Jackie’s previously unutilised comic strengths and was a hit, followed by another in the famous Drunken Master, which broke box-office records in Hong Kong and made Jackie a star across Asia.

Jackie now had power. He co-directed and choreographed Fearless Hyena for Lo Wei, directed the fast and tellingly silly Young Master on his own, then signed to the Golden Harvest Company, whose Raymond Chow had also discovered Bruce Lee. Now it got messy. Threatened both by Lo Wei and the Triads, he was sent to the US to make The Big Brawl (by the director and producers of Enter The Dragon), then joined the star-studded cast of Burt Reynolds’ Cannonball Run. Having by now been bought-out from Lo Wei for 10 million Hong Kong dollars, he returned to learn the directing craft and create ever more fantastic stunts. Jackie is a stunt historian, explaining how Hong Kong stuntmen had always used traditional punches and parries till Steve McQueen’s The Sand Pebbles was filmed there, using many local workers. It was then that the HK pros learned a new style of hitting and being hit. Soon, led by the likes of Jackie and John Woo, they would elevate the stunt to undreamed-of levels and would, of course, be ripped off by an American industry that inspired them in the first place.

Having, while in the US, discovered the works of silent stars Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, now Jackie concentrated on a mix of slapstick comedy and terrifying stunt work. Again he attempted to break America, with 1985’s The Protector (co-starring Danny Aiello) but, again coming over too mean, he failed once more.

In terms of cinema history, this failure was vital. Films are cheaper to make in Hong Kong and, with insurance companies less paranoid, more death-defying stunts can be attempted. Jackie’s new picture, Police Story, certainly tested that limit. Opening with a car chase through a shanty-town that destroys most of the houses and sends hundreds scurrying for cover, then ending with an unbelievable fight sequence in a shopping mall, with more flying glass than you could possibly imagine, it was utterly incredible, and spawned three sequels. Then came Armour Of God, an unashamed Indiana Jones steal that saw Jackie in Europe, battling with shady Franciscan monks. It also saw him fall 20 feet, hit his head on a rock, fracture his skull and go into a coma. He only missed a few days of filming, and would instil the same fortitude in his co-stars. Later, Maggie Cheung would need 17 stitches in her head after a Jackie stunt. Didn’t stop her either.

The movies kept coming, the comedy getting sillier, the stunts more and more outrageous. By the time of 1994’s Drunken Master 2, Jackie was scaling unheard-of heights of mayhem. Its seven-minute finale took four months to film, even though Jackie had brought together his own team of