Jackie Chan

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

The life of an action star is very short. I want to be an actor like Robert De Niro , like Dustin Hoffman or Clint Eastwood who in their 70s or 80s can still act.

Do not let circumstances control you. You change your circumstances.

Very difficult to understand American audience, what they like, what they don’t like. Some movie I like very much, it doesn’t work. Some movie I don’t like, it gets big box office. Very difficult.

After all those years in Asia, I don’t have to do promotion anymore. We just release a Jackie Chan movie and – Boom! – people go.

I will make action movies, I think, for a few more years, another five years.

In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me ‘Jackie Who?’.

American stuntmen are smart – they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance… But in Hong Kong, we don’t know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you’ve got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

For me the greatest source of income is still movies. Nothing – stocks, financial speculation, real estate speculation or businesses – makes more money for me than making movies.

I don’t want to be an action star, an action star’s life is so short. I want my life to get longer, I want my career to get longer.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, ‘Ah yes, they good.’ Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way.

I hate violence, yes I do. It’s kind of a dilemma, huh?.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

I’m tired of fighting. I’ve always known that I can’t be an action star all my life.

Don’t try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.

The ads all call me fearless, but that’s just publicity. Anyone who thinks I’m not scared out of my mind whenever I do one of my stunts is crazier than I am.

Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‘Jackie, are you scared?’ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.