The kung-fu king

HERE, as a sort of trailer, are a few glimpses from the life of Jackie Chan. Splatt! (That's the sound of his furious fist dispatching a bad guy.) A big-nosed boy is born in poverty. Thwack! He has one year of proper schooling. Kapow! Forty-one years later he is simultaneously the number one box-office hit in America and Asia and, therefore, the most popular actor on the planet at this moment. Crunch! He is definitely the world's most famous living Asian. Tra-laa! He is wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Slusheroo! He has more pulling power than any other man in the region. And, as the first reel ends, an adoring territory exhales a long group sigh of respect ... waaaaaahhh! So what is his secret? How come he gets to unite Asia and America? How come he succeeds where Stallone and Schwarzenegger and Emperor Hirohito failed? How come the only other characters to conquer these vastly different continents are Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald, who are not even real? What, apart from a rubber face and squashed nose, has Jackie Chan got? And, more to the point, where can the rest of the Hong Kong's ailing film industry get some? The answer, of course, is showing at a multiplex near you. If that is America, it will be Rumble In The Bronx, currently showing at 1,500 theatres across that country. If you are in Asia, then it is First Strike - the fourth instalment of Chan's Police Story saga - and showing just about everywhere. I saw it in Guangzhou at Lunar New Year, where the art deco cinema was cavernous and packed out. Three- or four-generation families shuffled in and took up entire rows, brattish only-childs scuttled up and down the aisles pursued by doting parents, lovers snuggled into the double 'kissing seats', pensioners surreptitiously snacked on their smuggled-in lunches. Yet the moment Chan appeared on screen - chasing the bad guys on a snowmobile through the Swiss Alps, hanging from a helicopter, falling into a freezing lake - we were a single audience; laughing, waah-ing and snuffling popcorn, in unison.

A large part of our viewing pleasure comes from the fusion of reel life and real life. The character Jackie Chan plays is always Jackie Chan. The costumes he wears on-screen are those he wears off-screen. The haircut has hardly changed in 20 years (sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit shorter, it is like some kind of breathing entity living on his head). Most important of all, he is his own special effect. The Jackie Chan hanging off a helicopter, leaping off a building or falling into a freezing lake is always Jackie Chan. To prove it, at the end of every movie is a montage of stunts-gone-wrong out-takes.

You can see him take an unscheduled 15-metre fall at the end of Armour Of God and smashing his skull on a rock (a splinter in his brain had to be removed in emergency surgery), getting sideswiped by a helicopter while hanging from a train in Police Story 3 and breaking his ankle in Rumble In The Bronx.

Keeping up-to-date with all his injuries is a job for only the most ardent and trivia-obsessed fan. When I ask Chan to list his injuries, he concedes defeat: 'Can't remember all of them; skull, three times nose, both jaws, neck, shoulder (bone comes out), chest (bone comes out), two elbows and ...' he points to his hands '... break, break, break. Plus break hip, have a lot of explosions and glass is inside butt; two knees and shins, many times, and ankles, many times, and toes. Everywhere.' Clearly Chan will risk his life to entertain his fans and each year, as a matter of professional pride, his stunts grow more spectacular and risky. And each year, of course, he is older. It is a compelling formula.

But Chan is much more than chop-socky's Evel Knievel. Warriors cannot unite and conquer Asia and America. He is king because, like Mickey and Ronald, he is first and foremost a clown. His kung-fu sequences owe as much to the feet of Gene Kelly as the fists of Wong Fei-hung. Towards the end of First Strike, the audience is entranced by an underwater fight which involves Chan, the bad guys and five sharks. The choreography is meticulous. Chan has no breathing apparatus and so every few beats he must steal a breath from one of the bad guys.

To complicate things further, the sharks will attack if they smell blood and three of the fighters, including Chan, have bleeding thumbs. They must fight with their thumbs in their mouths or in their opponents' mouths, and every now and then they must freeze as a shark swims by. 'I write each film with rhythm,' quotes his Internet web site. 'I want the audience to feel like they are dancing.

When I make a fight scene, I'll write the music first and then make sure the sounds of punching, kicking and breathing come out like music. When I go to a theatre to watch my films, I watch the audience and if their bodies are moving like they're sitting in a disco, I know I've succeeded.' But as well as being Jackie Chan on film, Jackie Chan is also Jackie Chan in the flesh. I wait for him at a photographer's studio in Chai Wan where he is to pose for a commercial. The place is busy with child actors (who will feature with Chan in the ad), their parents, assorted professionals and accessory super-cool girls. Chan enters. A man with a clipboard speaks to him but most people appear not to notice him. The atmosphere is tensely relaxed. Chan strips off his black Armani Mao suit and puts on the white kung-fu kit he must wear for the ad. By now everyone in the room has adjusted their position so they can watch Chan without appearing to. One resourceful parent has his back to Chan but is filming him with a camcorder tucked under his arm. Everyone in the room, including myself, appears to be fighting a private mental battle between staying cool and standing on a chair and shouting: 'Hey look, it's Jackie Chan and he's wearing black cotton Speedos.' Chan himself, however, is disarmingly free of celebrity hauteur. Indeed at times he seems exactly the breathless eager-to-please character he plays on the screen. At one point between photographs he is simultaneously answering my questions in English, holding a mobile-phone conversation in Cantonese, stretching his left leg on a light stand which is almost as high as his head and signing autographs for the child actors, two of whom are also called Jackie. Needless to say, despite his 41 years, Chan is still in staggering physical shape. He can still do 300 press ups, vertical kicks and backflips. Indeed, he does quite a few as we talk. 'American number one, that's good, I am happy,' he says of his recent success, 'but I don't lose my head. What about next week? What about next year? Back to work - that is the most important thing.' This stay-calm attitude is also the rule in his office. All American scripts have been refused, all offers from American directors and producers kept on hold. When, earlier that afternoon, Willie Chan (no relation), Chan's manager of more than 20 years, staggered out of his office to announce the star had just been invited to present an award at next week's Oscars, Chan refused to celebrate. 'Everyone say to me, 'Why you not happy, Jackie?' But I say I am happy but I don't want one small success to go to my head.' In a way, you can understand Chan's reticence. He tried to crack Hollywood once before, moving to LA in 1980 to make The Big Brawl and The Cannonball Run. The Big Brawl saw Chan being hopelessly misdirected as a sort of son of Bruce Lee and Cannonball Run had him cast as a Japanese character. 'I tried to please the American market by doing American movie within the American system. I fail. I lose face. This time I make the movies I want and I make them first for Asia. If America likes them too, good.