Continued from previous post
Chan met actress Joan Lin (pictured together), who he calls ‘the love of my life’, while in a trip to Taiwan, where she is from. Chan says that she was a ‘beloved actress with a respectable image while I was a vulgar kung fu guy who was unworthy of her’
Chan writes that he foolishly believed his sexist friends and thought that Lin might have got pregnant on purpose so he ‘constantly thought of ways to keep my money from her’. Thinking back now he calls his behavior ‘wicked’. Pictured: The couple in July 2017
Chan cheated on his wife with beauty queen with Elaine Ng Yi Lei (pictured) and when the affair became public in 1999 it scandalized Hong Kong. At the time Chan said publicly: ‘I have made a mistake that many men in the world make’
Chan met actress Joan Lin, who he calls ‘the love of my life’, while in a trip to Taiwan, where she is from.
Chan says that she was a ‘beloved actress with a respectable image while I was a vulgar kung fu guy who was unworthy of her’.
They tried to keep their relationship secret but in 1981 she became pregnant and they decided to get married at a rooftop coffee shop in Los Angeles.
Chan admits that he ‘worked through her whole pregnancy’ and didn’t visit her in California once where she was preparing to give birth.
He writes that he foolishly believed his sexist friends and thought that Lin might have got pregnant on purpose so he ‘constantly thought of ways to keep my money from her’.
Thinking back now he calls his behavior ‘wicked’.
Chan calls their marriage ‘less than conventional’ and says that being apart from each other for so long was actually the key to their relationship.
He writes: ‘I was selfish and didn’t know how to empathize with others. I was also too easily influenced. Yet Joan set me free to make my own way. I respect her a lot and am grateful to her for sacrificing so much for me’.
That didn’t stop Chan from cheating on her with Ng and when the affair became public in 1999 it scandalized Hong Kong.
At the time Chan said publicly: ‘I have made a mistake that many men in the world make’.
Privately he writes that he looked at himself in the mirror and said: ‘You’re a real b***ard’.
Years earlier after rowing with Lin, Chan took it out on Jaycee and picked him up with one hand and threw him across the room. Jaycee, who was a toddler at the time. went crashing into the sofa, leaving Lin ‘terrified’. Pictured: Chan and Jaycee in 2009
Chan has never reportedly sought a relationship with his daughter, and this week Etta married her girlfriend, Canadian Andi Autumn and wrote on Instagram that she ‘never felt love’ during her childhood
Etta and her mother have a troubled relationship and she has twice called the police on her
He called a family meeting and told his wife and Jaycee, their young son: ‘I’ve made an unforgivable mistake and I don’t know how I can explain it, so I won’t’.
Lin started to cry and Jaycee glared at him - but they both forgave him.
That was far from the only family drama.
Years earlier after fighting with Lin, Chan took it out on Jaycee and picked him up with one hand and threw him across the room.
Jaycee, who was a toddler at the time, went crashing into the sofa, leaving Lin ‘terrified’.
Chan writes that Lin told him: ‘He’s just a child. Why did you do that?’
Chan apologized and said he would never do it again.
Reflecting on his family life Chan says that over the years he has admitted that ‘I’ve done well by a lot of people but not my own family’.
He says that ‘I’ve not been a good father or a good husband but I did my duty to my son and his mother’.
But he doesn’t address Etta, his daughter with Ng, as if he is trying to erase her from his personal history. Ng has since claimed that Chan has given her no money and that she has even had to cover their daughter’s school fees.
Etta and her mother have a troubled relationship and she has twice called the police on her.
Speaking of her father, Etta has said: ‘He is not my dad. I have no feelings for him. He is my biological father but he is not in my life’.
Chan (pictured in April) finally broke into Hollywood in his 40s with Rumble in the Bronx and hit the big time with Rush Hour alongside Chris Tucker
Jaycee, a musician and actor, has been in trouble too and in 2014 he was arrested for marijuana possession. He was jailed for six months and his father publicly apologized for his behavior.
Chan finally broke into Hollywood in his 40s with Rumble in the Bronx and hit the big time with Rush Hour alongside Chris Tucker.
He was flattered to be invited by Sylvester Stallone to the set of his film Demolition Man where he discovered that Stallone had tapes of all his films.
Chan was stunned when the crew said that whenever they ran out of ideas they just watched one of his movies.
Since then Chan has appeared in Kung Fu Panda, The Tuxedo and a remake of The Karate Kid, bringing the total number of films he has been in to more than 200 over 50 years in the movie business.
Along the way Chan has attracted obsessed fans like the man who gets the names of his films tattooed onto his body.
Another woman bought a one way ticket from the Philippines to Hong Kong and stood outside the front of his office every day.
She then stalked him around the world, turning up in California where she tried to get into his hotel room by saying she was his girlfriend.
Chan writes that he was conned out of $2 million by a business associate but bizarrely, he did not mind. Yet when a close friend cheated him out of a tens of thousands of dollars from the sale of a Rolls Royce he sued and bankrupted him.
Chan’s success helped a generation of Chinese stars like Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li to make it in Hollywood and for directors like John Woo to establish themselves.
Reflecting on the changing movie business, Chan writes: 'Hollywood learned from us (the Chinese) then became better than us and now they don’t need us.
‘If we were to go head to head with the Hollywood stunt people these days, do you think the Chinese would win? No way’.
Jackie Chan’s book Never Grow Up is out on Tuesday and available here.
We’ve discussed Jackie’s scandals, Jaycee and Etta elsewhere here.
