Hong Kong martial arts cinema: Jackie Chan, in unpublished 1998 interview, talks about his hardscrabble early career
- A stuntman on Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, an action choreographer a year later on Police Woman – Jackie Chan talks about how he furthered his career
- Chan also talks about learning behind-the-camera skills by volunteering to help cinematographers
Jackie Chan worked as a stuntman during the early 1970s, notably on the Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury in 1972, before working his way up to stunt coordinator and action choreographer.
Chan’s first film choreographing the action scenes was 1973’s Police Woman.
In this extract from an unpublished interview by this writer from 1998, Chan describes how he made the most of every opportunity to further his career.
How did you manage your career back in the early days?
Jackie Chan: I don’t really feel that I had much of a choice about what I was doing. I was forced to change what I was doing because of society and the nature of the movie business. I’m not a genius, I’m just a normal person, and back then, I was just making movies to make a living, and that was tough to do. I knew that if I didn’t work really hard, I would not be a success.
One of my jobs was showing the actors and actresses how to fight in their scenes. So I would spend a lot of time showing them what to do, especially the actresses. Why? Because I knew that they would not be able to do the things that I was showing them!
As they couldn’t do what I had planned, the director would always ask me to double for them in the fight scenes – and if I had to double for them, I would earn more money!
Hong Kong martial arts cinema: everything you need to know
Every time I doubled for an actress or an actor, I got HK$150. So I would teach the actor one difficult movement each day. The director would say, ‘Wow, that looks good’, and I would say, ‘Yes, but they can’t really do it properly’.
So the director would tell me to do it instead, as I was the stunt coordinator.
For the next shot, I would teach another actor to do a difficult thing. That way I could be a double again! Every day I choreographed a couple of things to make me more money.
What did you learn about acting and directing during this period?
JC: Because I was doing the stunts on screen as a double, I got more experience in front of the camera. I also learned a lot about camera angles when I was a stunt coordinator. When I first became a stunt coordinator, I didn’t know anything about camera angles. But I used to help the cinematographer, by getting the lenses for him, and so on.
At that time, only the cinematographer was allowed to look through the lens, so I became the cinematographer’s ‘godson’, and that meant I had the chance to look through it. I asked a lot of questions – what’s this, what’s that? – and they taught me. I became one of them, a camera assistant. I always wanted to learn, and I was learning all the time.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the career of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. We begin this week with a never-before-published interview with Jackie Chan during the peak of his career.
