Jackie Chan Oscar ‘finally’ wins

Five decades and 200 films later,

LOS ANGELES — When Jackie Chan saw an Oscar at Sylvester Stallone’s house 23 years ago, he said that was the moment he decided he wanted one.

On Saturday at the annual Governors Awards, the Chinese actor and martial arts star finally received his little gold statuette, an honorary Oscar for his decades of work in film.

“After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films, after so many bones, finally,” Chan, 62, quipped at the star-studded gala dinner while holding his Oscar.

The actor recalled watching the ceremony with his parents and his father always asking him why he didn’t have Hollywood’s top accolade despite having made so many movies.

He praised his hometown Hong Kong for making him “proud to be Chinese,” and thanked his fans, saying they were the reason “I continue to make movies, jumping through windows, kicking and punching, breaking my bones.”

The 62-year-old — who shared a table with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone — left politics out of an unscripted acceptance speech.

His Hollywood breakthrough came with Rumble in the Bronx in 1996, and he has gone on to become a global star through the Rush Hour movies, Shanghai Noon, The Karate Kid and the Kung Fu Panda series of animated films. The actor was introduced by his

Rush Hour co-star Chris Tucker, and actors Michelle Yeoh and Tom Hanks, who referred to him as “Jackie ‘Chantastic’ Chan.”

Hanks said it was especially gratifying to be able to acknowledge Chan’s work because martial arts and action comedy films were two genres often overlooked during awards season.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, hosts of the annual ceremony, also bestowed honorary Oscars on British film editor Anne V. Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster and prolific documentarian Frederick Wiseman.

The evening was attended by Hollywood’s elite, including Denzel Washington, Lupita Nyong’o, Nicole Kidman, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Amy Adams and Dev Patel.

Stalmaster, 88, a one-time stage and screen actor from Omaha, Nebraska, began working in casting in the mid1950s and has signed up talent for more than 200 films, including The Graduate, Deliverance, and Tootsie, and is credited with securing career-defining roles for actors such as Jeff Bridges, Andy Garcia, Christopher Reeve and John Travolta. He is the first casting director to receive an Oscar.

Coates, who is 90 and lives in England, was honored for a 60-year career that has seen her collaborating with some of the industry’s most acclaimed directors. She won the film editing Oscar for 1962’s Lawrence of

Arabia and has edited more than 50 films, said she shared her honorary Oscar “with all the unsung heroes” of filmmaking.

Wiseman, 86, has made a film almost every year since 1967, starting with the Titicut Follies, which went behind the scenes at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. His documentaries include 1970’s Hospital, 1987’s Blind and last year’s In Jackson Heights. He said: “I think it’s as important to document kindness, ability and generosity of spirit as it is to show cruelty, banality and indifference,” he said.

The Governors Awards were created as a separate event in 2009 to allow more space for the honorees to accept their statuettes and to unclutter the main show’s packed schedule.

Previous winners of honorary Oscars include Lauren Bacall, Francis Ford Coppola, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie and Spike Lee. —