The Making of Jackie Chan : How a school dropout became a living legend

An actor who got his first success in Hollywood after 34 years of his first movie released. A stuntman of Bruce Lee movies had broken almost every bone in his body at least once. He has acted in over 100 movies in around 50 years and holds the world record for most stunts by a living actor. Jackie Chan was born on April 7, 1954, in Hong Kong as Chan Kong-sang. He grew up in a modest family. His father worked as a cook and his mother worked as a housekeeper for the French Ambassador. Jackie was an energetic kid, always rolling around like a cannonball. He was nicknamed Pow Pow.

Jackie didn’t do great at school and failed his first year of primary. He was beaten for his poor grades. When he was only 7 years old, his parents moved to Australia for work and left Jackie Chan alone in Hong Kong. They left him in a very strict boarding school where he learned acrobatics, martial arts, singing and dancing. So, for the next 10 years he trained all day long and some days he trained for 19 hours. He said that the process of mastering martial arts was very painful. Because the school was very strict, if some mistakes were made, harsh punishments followed and he was also bullied by other kids. He couldn’t drop out of the school because he had nowhere else to go, his parents were in Australia.