If Buster Keaton were alive and well and living in Hong Kong, directing and starring in kung fu comedies, the end eroduct would probably resemble the films of Jackie Chan. Chan's action sequences, while at least as thrilling as the very best of Hollywood, are further distinguished by meticulous, witty choreography that transforms potentially lethal action into elaborate clowning. As in Keaton's films, the viewer's laughter is sometimes stifled by awe at the sheer physical prowess on display. With his disarming smile and compact (5'9", 150 lbs) yet muscular frame, Chan does not look or act like a traditional action hero. As The New York Post film critic Jami Bernard observed: "Unlike American action heroes, Chan often takes his lumps, takes the easy way out, or even opts to run." Most of the films that built his reputation have the amiable atmosphere of boys' adventures; they are light, good-natured and surprisingly chaste. Chan offers a benign alternative to such macho Hollywood stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme. What's more, as a trained martial artist, he could effortlessly kick their pampered butts. Reputedly a veteran of more than 100 films (more than 40 as an adult), Chan first starred in cheaply produced martial arts movies (e.g., "New Fist of Fury" 1976), in which he aped the fearsome fighting style of the late, great Bruce Lee. He only became Asia's number one box-office star after perfecting his own disarming comic persona and a deliriously slapstick, yet acrobatic, fighting style to match. Chan does all his own stunt work and has almost been killed on several occasions. With his notoriety, no insurance company will underwrite his productions. He had to form the Jackie Chan Stuntmen Association after so many stuntmen were injured during the making of "Police Story" (1985) that none were willing to work with him again. Once he had assembled his own team, Chan trained them personally and paid their medical bills out of his own pocket. He also formed Jackie's Angels, a casting and modeling agency, to cast his increasingly elaborate productions. Chan's life is already the stuff of Hong Kong legend. He has claimed that his family was so poor at the time of his birth that they offered to sell him to the British doctor who delivered him because they could not afford to pay the medical bill or feed their child. (They eventually reconsidered the sale.) Chan's father and mother found work, as a cook and maid respectively, at the French consulate in Hong Kong before moving to Australia to work at the US embassy when Chan was a small child. The six-year-old was sent back to HK alone in 1961 to be indentured to a ten year stint with the Chinese Opera Research Institute. From five in the morning to nearly midnight, the young Chan endured an exceedingly rigorous training program in the techniques of Peking Opera. This entailed singing, dancing, mime, acrobatics and a variety of martial arts, all under threat of corporal punishment (caning) and food deprivation. Yu Shan Yuan, the strict master of the school, placed Chan--then called Yuan Lou--in a student performance group called the Seven Little Fortunes, where he began his more than three decade association with the supremely talented Samo Hung and Yuen Biao. The Three Brothers, as they came to call themselves, formed an awesomely coordinated action-comedy trio and performed in "Wheels on Meals" (1983) and "Dragons Forever" (1988), both directed by Hung, and the Chan-directed classic "Project A" (1983). Chan began his film career at age eight in the Cantonese feature "Big and Little Wong Tin Bar" (1962). He went on to appear in a number of HK singing films. Chan is said to have been in more than 25 films by age ten. He graduated at age 17 and, using the name Chen Yuan Long, found work as a stunt man, martial arts fighter and extra at the Shaw Brothers studios. Chan was gratified to receive a compliment from Bruce Lee while serving as the stunt double for the dreaded Mr. Suzuki in "Fist of Fury/The Chinese Connection" (1971). Chan successfully executed what was reportedly the highest fall ever attempted in a HK film, duly impressing Lee. Becoming the highest paid film artist in Hong Kong and cultivating an international following, Chan has surpassed the prematurely deceased Lee to become the biggest box-office draw in Japan and the rest of Asia. He has repeatedly set and broken box-office records with some of the most lavish productions in Asian cinema. Chan is also a sensation as a pop recording star; many of his films feature him singing the themes and performing numbers. Beginning with "The Big Brawl" (1980), Chan also made several attempts to cross over to fame on the American screen with limited success: as part of the large comedy ensembles headed by Burt Reynolds in the two "Cannonball Run" racecar movies (1980, 1983) and as an unlikely NYC cop opposite Danny Aiello in "The Protector" (1985). Chan did not have creative control over these efforts nor did he coordinate the stunts. Though there was a devoted cult following in the English-speaking world familiar with his superlative HK productions developed, most Americans were not given a genuine chance to sample his creative wares. Chan avoided these pitfalls with "Rumble in the Bronx" (1996), his fifth English-language release. Teamed with former stunt man/precision driver-turned-director Stanley Tong (who had helmed Chan's 1992 "Police Story III: Supercop") and pop star-actress Anita Mui (sometimes described as "the Asian Madonna"), Chan had creative control over "Rumble in the Bronx". Shot in Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, this joint venture between Hong Kong's Golden Harvest and the US's New Line Cinema served up an old-fashioned story with state-of-the-art stunts bolstered with a major marketing campaign. Chan had arrived, turning up in numerous publications, getting keys to various cities and chatting on TV with David Letterman and Jay Leno. In the film, he portrayed a vacationing HK cop dealing with gangs and the mob in a quirky and rather quaint Bronx of the imagination. The nonsensical story provided an excellent showcase both for Chan's peerless athleticism and his engagingly boyish personality. Despite some unconvincing dubbing, reviewers and audiences were charmed and astounded. Raking in a quick $10 million, the modestly budgeted ($6 million) "Rumble" became the number one film of its opening week. America had finally discovered Jackie Chan. Executives promptly scrambled to bring in more of Hong Kong's most famous export. While his next few films stumbled at the box office (i.e., "Mr. Nice Guy" 1998), "Rush Hour" (also 1998) proved to be a crowd pleaser, teaming the martial artist with rising comic actor Chris Tucker and led to the inevitable sequel (2001's "Rush Hour 2"). The immense popularity of the "Rush Hour" films set the tone for the next stage in Chan's U.S. career -- instead of being called on to carry a picture on his own, he would be teamed with a popular sidekick in action-oriented buddy comedies. The actor's next successful outing was with Owen Wilson in "Shanghai Noon" (2000), a highly amusing comedy-Western casting Chan as the Chinese Chon Wang (sounds like "John Wayne") seeking a kidnapped princess in the Old West with the help of Wilson's scalawag Roy O'Bannon. Once again Chan showed real charm as a fish-out-of-water, and provided a great foil for an up-and-coming comic actor. In 2002, Chan joined with the less-comedically gifted Jennifer Love Hewitt in the action comedy "The Tuxedo," which was made with some verve and ingenuity but didn't lure large audiences; and in 2003, he rejoined Wilson for the sequel "Shanghai Knights" which took the two leads to London for a further dose of slapstick action. That same year, Chan starred in the English language Hong Kong actioner "The Medallion," playing a detective who suffers a fatal accident involving a mysterious medallion and is transformed into an immortal warrior with superhuman powers. Most critics found the film to be a fairly standard Chan outing, with a few eye-popping action stunts and a potent dose of Chan's charms, but otherwise unexceptional. Chan next appeared headlining the all-star ensemble of "Around the World in 80 Days" (2004), a loose, comedic version of the classic Jules Verne novel in which Chan played Phileas Fogg's traveling companion, Passepartout--repositioned this time as the true star of the story, a Chinese thief traveling incognito and defending the eccentric Fogg from a variety of menaces and bizarre situations.