Martial arts star Chan’s Australian connection
Jackie Chan offers up a startling confession soon after he sits down for a chat. ‘‘I am Australian,’’ Chan, the legendary 63-year-old Hong Kongborn martial arts star said last weekend while promoting his new animated family-comedy film, The Lego Ninjago Movie.
It’s the first of numerous startling insights into Chan’s littleknown and influential years growing up in Canberra and the long connection his parents, Charles and Lee-Lee Chan, have with Australia. Both were buried in Canberra. Known worldwide as ‘‘Jackie Chan’’ after making more than 100 Hollywood and Asian films, including the Police Story and Rush Hour franchises, Shanghai Noon and The Tuxedo, Chan has had a few different names - several from his time in Australia.
If it wasn’t for Australia the world would not know him as Jackie.
When he attended the ACT’s Dickson College he was known as ‘‘Steve’’. Around the US Embassy in Canberra where his parents worked, he was known as Pao.
‘‘I tried to find a job. A guy said ‘What’s your English name?’ and I said ‘I don’t have one’,’’ Chan said.
‘‘My friend was a driver for the embassy. His name was Jack so it was, ‘OK, call him Jack’.’’
Chan offered another interesting titbit - his dad was a spy. Chan Sr was hiding out at the US Embassy in Canberra because he was a Chinese nationalist agent who originally fled China to Hong Kong to avoid being captured by rival Communists.
Chan, however, spent most of his young life estranged from his parents. While they lived in Canberra, he grew up at a Hong Kong boarding school where he trained in martial arts and acrobatics.
It was only in his teens he permanently joined them in Australia.
A son estranged from his dad is a key theme of his new Ninjago movie.
When Chan, as a teenager, left Australia and went to Hong Kong to pursue an acting career, he took his Aussie ‘‘Jack’’ name but extended it to ‘‘Jacky’’.
‘‘Later on when I knew a little bit of English I said , ‘Jack, no good, no rhythm’,’’ Chan said. ‘‘Then I said, ‘OK, I’ll put ‘y’ for Jacky Chan’.
‘‘Then I made movies but none were a success. The box office was no good. Then I changed to another company, Golden Harvest, and they said ‘y is no good. You should change it to ie - Jackie’.
‘‘They changed the posters from ‘y’ to ‘ie’ and the movies were a big success.’’