This was the birth of “Jackie Chan comedy kung fu.” He got hit in the face, ran away, hid behind furniture, and used buckets, brooms, and ladders as weapons. The audience laughed with him, not at him. The film was a monster hit, breaking box office records in Hong Kong and Asia. Riding the wave, Yuen Woo-ping and Jackie immediately made Drunken Master (1978) the same year. This time, Jackie played the real-life folk hero Wong Fei-hung—but as a mischievous, disrespectful teenager who gets trained in the taboo “Drunken Boxing” by a vicious master. The final fight, where Jackie fights the killer “Thunderleg” while simulating drunkenness with staggering precision, is a masterpiece of physical storytelling.
Jackie’s role was minuscule: he played a poor, starving orphan boy who collapses in the snow. The scene required him to lie motionless while “snow” (shredded paper) fell on him. Terrified of Master Yu, who stood just off-camera with a bamboo cane, Jackie did not dare to flinch. He held his breath, tears freezing on his cheeks, not from acting but from genuine fear. The director yelled “Cut!” and Master Yu gave a curt nod. Jackie had done his first job. He was paid a bowl of rice and a piece of fish. He never saw the film—it is now considered lost. For the next several years, Jackie and his opera brothers (including Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao) became the go-to child stunt performers for Shaw Brothers and other studios. They played dead bodies, kicked-up dust, and fell down stairs. In the musical The Love Eterne (1963), Jackie is an unidentifiable face in a crowd of schoolchildren. His first real “stunt” came in King Cat (1967), where he performed a backward somersault off a low wall. He got fifty dollars and a bruised tailbone. jackie chan first movies
The choreography called for him to leap backward, crash through thin balsa-wood panels, and land on a mattress. But Bruce Lee was a perfectionist. The first two takes, Jackie’s timing was off. On the third take, Lee connected slightly harder than intended. Jackie flew through the door, landed on his neck, and was knocked unconscious for a few seconds. When he woke up, Bruce Lee was leaning over him, genuinely concerned. “Are you okay, kid?” Lee asked. Jackie, dizzy and ecstatic, said, “Yes, Mr. Lee! Again!” This was the birth of “Jackie Chan comedy kung fu
Jackie Chan’s first movie wasn’t an action film. It was a tearjerker. Born Chan Kong-sang in 1954, Jackie was the son of poor parents who worked for the French ambassador in Hong Kong. As a hyperactive child, he was enrolled at the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera school run by the brutal Master Yu Jim-yuen. There, he endured ten-hour days of acrobatics, singing, martial arts, and, most importantly, pain. Riding the wave, Yuen Woo-ping and Jackie immediately