Jackie Chan was born on this day in 1954. We may be stretching the definition of history, here—but your author is a 90s kid who literally wrote a book report on Jackie's autobiography in elementary school, so get ready to learn some Jackie facts. First: While he's been a household name for decades, his family went through a lot of suffering for him to get where he did.
Before his birth, his parents Charles and Lee-lee had fled from China as political refugees to British Hong Kong. As a young man, Charles' martial arts prowess landed him a gig as a personal guard for a major military figure. He lost that job when he accidentally fired his rifle, which continued firing after he dropped it—not exactly a sign of competence. Then, he worked on a Japanese cargo ship, but was caught smuggling. While imprisoned, Charles saw two people executed, and others die for various reasons.
Eventually Charles got out, and managed to get a job as a spy working for his old military boss in China. He led a group of dozens of intelligence agents and was shot twice in attempted assassinations. China was then at war with Japan, so Charles and his family moved inland to a province called Anhui to ensure his safety. Still, Japanese air raids killed his sister and parents. He lived in the city's ruins for some time.
Then, another war broke out, this time between the "Nationalists" and the communists who'd go on to establish the current government in China. Charles fled to British Hong Kong, abandoning his two children (his wife had died of cancer some years earlier), as he was a potential target for the victorious revolutionaries. It was there that Jackie Chan was born.
When he was seven years old, Charles and Lee-lee headed to Australia to find work. Jackie was left at a Hong Kong boarding school, where he got a top-rank education in martial arts, acting, singing, and other art forms. He was a pretty good student, not least because of the extreme punishment students would face if they stepped out of line. He was, very literally, forced to play roles in films.
After graduating, he worked as an acrobat and stuntman in martial arts movies, including a role in a Bruce Lee film. But when Lee died suddenly, Jackie was tapped as a sort of successor. We know how things went from there: He broke out with the film Drunken Master in the 80s and had a slew of hits in the U.S. in the 90s (especially Rush Hour). He also started a modeling agency and a production company.
This was a pretty long Off-script, so I'll stop here—but fyi, his parents are even more fascinating than I made them out to be. We didn't even get to them both being involved in the opium industry. Same for Jackie Chan; he's also a pretty successful singer in the Chinese-speaking world, and has gone by three different names throughout his life ... but we're out of time for today. If you want to read more, there's a good biography of him at (go figure) Biography.com.
