Jackie Chan is a myth.

I’m going to change the way martial arts is viewed. I’m going to change the game. I’m going to change the way people approach fighting.

My schedule goes: wake up, running, exercise, downstairs, running shoes off, then to the shower. That’s the Jackie Chan diary.

The goal of jiu-jitsu in self-defense isn’t to take someone down to the ground – the goal in jiu-jitsu for self-defense is actually to be able to defend yourself on the ground, get up, and get away from an attacker. That’s what the goal is.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

I don’t want people saying, ‚Should we get a female director?‘ I want to hear, ‚Should we get a great director for this movie?‘

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

I’ve learned new footwork patterns that are very unusual. I’ve learned how to find a lower centre of gravity, and I’ve found more angles to throw shots.

I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.

Who wants to leave the door open to being dominated physically by another human being? Jiu Jitsu gives you the ability to not be dominated by that person, and to me, that’s real peace of mind. I don’t have to worry about that when I’m walking around in the world.

But I do believe that there’s going to be a time where all movies are going to be made in 3D and it’s just going to be a given, and that is going to be an exciting time.

Chinese combatants, men and women, inheritors of a millennial culture, are people of uncommon intelligence and an invincible spirit of struggle.

I love wushu a lot and I would love to see it included in future Olympic Games.

I want to be an executive producer.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

When I make a film – I direct my own film, I write my own script – that’s what I want to hear from the audience. ‚Oh, thank you, Jackie!‘

I think I am the greatest fighter in any class. I know I can hold two, maybe even three belts.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

I’ll continue to make the typical Adam Sandler comedies.

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

As we all know, sequels can be tricky.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, ‚Ah yes, they good.‘ Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way.

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

Brad will tell you. He puts a movie on, I’m asleep in 10 minutes. I have no patience. But the kids love action movies with comedy, Jackie Chan and all that.

I sometimes just don’t like to see the Ultimate Fighting. I just find it, as a martial artist, I just find it too violent.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

My friend James Cameron and I made three films together – True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Jiu Jitsu is a great workout both mentally and physically. You want to be strong for it and flexible for it.

I want to be an expert in different fighting styles, new training methods, new ways of thinking.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I always play women I would date.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

Being a stunt coordinator, I have to take care not only of myself but I have to make sure everyone is safe.

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

I do love the films I’ve done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we’re trying to make people laugh and I’m very proud of that.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

People say that I’m a boxer. I actually started with kick boxing, and then I moved onto boxing, and then I moved onto grappling.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we’ve been trying to generate material.