I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action [Mass Market Paperback]

Jackie Chan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1999

As one of the biggest stars to burst into U.S. theaters, Jackie Chan has wowed audiences with death-defying stunts. But who really is this lightning-fast Charlie Chaplin of martial arts moviemaking? Now, in I Am Jackie Chan, he tells the fascinating, harrowing, ultimately triumphant story of his life: How the rebellious son of refugees in tumultuous 1950s Hong Kong became the disciplined disciple of a Chinese Opera Master. How the dying art of Chinese opera led Jackie to the movie business. And how he broke into Hollywood big time by breaking almost every bone in his body.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Since his first role in 1962 at the age of 8, Jackie Chan has appeared in more than 70 movies. For more than 20 years, he has been the biggest star in Asia, but in the West he remained a secret, his movies passed around on tape and his fame growing by word of mouth alone. In the '90s, with the success of crossover movies like Rush Hour and the support of a new generation of filmmakers who grew up watching Jackie Chan videotapes, his star finally rose in the West. But where did he come from, and how did he achieve so much?

His autobiography, I Am Jackie Chan, answers those questions in an engaging, almost novelistic style. When his father moves to Australia to take up a new job, the young Jackie is placed in Hong Kong's China Drama Academy under the tutelage of Master Yu Jim-yuen. For the next 10 years he is trained in martial arts, dance, acrobatics, singing, and comedy, while suffering extraordinary hardships, including regular beatings and near-starvation. Yet he can look back on this period of his life with considerable affection, not least because it taught him the skills, and provided him with the network of friends, that would sustain his film career for decades. Chan has always earned the respect of his fans by committing himself wholeheartedly to creating the most death-defying stunts possible. His achievements seem even more remarkable when set against the struggles described in this book. In the Drama School, as a young stuntman, in his first troubled attempts to make movies in America--Chan's personality shines through, and I Am Jackie Chan can only enhance his reputation as one of the most likable and admirable movie stars in the world. The book also includes Jackie's comments on all of his movies, lists of his favorite stunts and fights, and an astonishing catalog of all his major injuries. Can you imagine what it must feel like to dislocate your cheekbone? --Simon Leake --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

One of Asia's most popular film stars, Chan has helped reinvent the Hong Kong action genre by blending hyperkinetic stunts with a self-deprecating humor and a freewheeling flamboyance reminiscent of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. His autobiography, unfortunately, contains few of these elements. In minute detail, he chronicles his punishing childhood in the Chinese Opera Research Institute and his rise to superstardom. From age seven to 17, under the severe discipline?some might even call it child abuse?of his Opera Master, Chan was trained for theater and film work. After the death of Bruce Lee (Chan was a stuntman in Lee's Fists of Fury and Enter the Dragon), his studio, Golden Harvest, attempted to turn him into a Lee clone. But Chan's film persona finally gelled when he began to emulate his silent-movie heroes and to punctuate his films with what he calls "the superstunt"?high-risk feats of derring-do that he performs himself. Chan takes himself to task for neglecting his family (indeed, his wife and 14-year-old son are only briefly mentioned), and offers a candid look at the gangs, called Triads, that retain a powerful grip on the Hong Kong film industry. But despite such glimpses behind the actor's Teflon veneer, and his punchy anecdotes, this surprisingly tame, sometimes plodding memoir fails to deliver the heady thrills one has come to expect of a Jackie Chan production. FYI: I Am Jackie Chan is published to coincide with the release of his first American film in 13 years, Rush Hour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (June 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345429133
• ISBN-13: 978-0345429131
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An exotic, benevolent and touching success-story, October 16, 2000

By 

Jean-Francois Virey (59500 DOUAI France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (Mass Market Paperback)

For many Americans, Jackie Chan made his screen debut in the late 1990s with such hits as *Rumble in the Bronx* or *Rush Hour*. But a privileged few have been enjoying his movies for more than two decades, from the cheap, non-stop-kung-fu flicks he first starred in to his more recent and more expensive cop movies and period pieces.

*I Am Jackie Chan* is the story of the making of these movies and of the man who made them possible: a first-hand, first-person account of Jackie Chan's eventful life, from his training at a Peking Opera school, where we discover the overweight bully who was to become "big brother" Samo Hung, to his second and hugely successful attempt to conquer the American public.

The book unravels the rather bumpy ride to stardom of this atypical martial artist who always preferred being beaten up by the bad guys to the other way around, who repeatedly risked his life to perform the most incredible stunts ever filmed (Jackie stop! We don't want to lose you!) and whose happy-go-lucky persona finally eclipsed that of Bruce Lee himself.

I really loved this success-story, set in a world whose death warrant was signed in 1997 when the Communists took control of Hong Kong. Jackie has seen it all, from the Shaw Brothers to Golden Harvest; from the greatest of all Hong Kong directors, King Hu, to that smug, overbearing, cigar-smoking individual with a penchant for "bathroom humor and clumsy slapstick"- Lo Wei; from the evil Triads to the elitist clique of the movie stuntmen, who lived in the present because their future didn't even have a wire to hang on to.

If for you the names of Cheng Pei Pei, Michelle Yeoh (pre-Tomorrow Never Dies) and Yuen Woo Ping (pre-Matrix) have more magic to them than the equivalent Hollywood names, then you will enjoy this unique, exotic auto-biography, which really begs for a screen version in the vein of *Dragon: The Story of Bruce Lee*.

A good companion to this volume is the 75-minute video documentary entitled *Jackie Chan: My Own Story*, which shows rare footage from his films, bloopers and interviews with Jackie Chan, his closest associates and the American stars who count themselves his fans. At the end of this documentary, Chan says that he has fulfilled his three dreams of personal success, but that he now has a fourth one: world peace. I think we definitely ought to give him that. He deserves it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and entertaining, August 10, 2005

By 

D. Thomas "Dave T" (London, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (Mass Market Paperback)

A fascinating insight into the mind and career of the world's biggest movie star. With exhaustive (and exhausting!) descriptions of Jackie's brutal Peking opera training and early days as a stuntman and actor, almost everything you want to know about Jackie is here.

Not that there aren't omissions - his illegitimate son Jaycee, now trying to make a name for himself as an actor, is never mentioned. Jackie is also quick to take credit (he claims 'Half a Loaf of Kung Fu' and 'Snake in the Eagle's Shadow' were the first kung fu comedies, which they weren't) and slow to give it out (he describes his opera brothers' film 'The Prodigal Son,' arguably the best kung fu movie ever made, as "solid"). But Jackie's charisma and determination shine through on every page, and you can't help but admire the guy. A must read for Jackie fans and aficionados of Hong Kong cinema.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Action Packed, November 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (Hardcover)

I am a huge Jackie Chan fan. I love all of his movies and thought that this book would be great to read. I was shocked at all that Jackie had been through in his life. Just reading this book made me feel for him, and since I have read this I am trying to see every movie that he has made. This book tells his life story and all of the stuff about his movies that you could not read anywhere else. It has a list of all of the movies that he has made, his top ten stunts, his top ten fights, and the injuries that he has received. I recomend this to anyone who likes Jackie Chan, or to anyone looking for a good book.