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’ve choreographed all of my movies.

You’ve got to keep your finger on the pulse of what your audience is thinking, and know what they’ll accept from you.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

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.

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.

My wish is to bring my heroes to the big screen, and many of them have already appeared in my films.

Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don’t move fast, but I just keep moving.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

After all those years in Asia, I don’t have to do promotion anymore. We just release a Jackie Chan movie and – Boom! – people go.

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

We’re making the music that the people are asking us for.

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.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don’t have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

For ‚Star Wars‘ I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

Jackie Chan is a myth.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

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.

The last few years I’ve been saying I was ready to quit. It wasn’t that interesting to me. Now that I’m directing, it’s all new again.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

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

Eventually, it came to this place like, ‚I’d like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.‘ ‚Man of Tai Chi‘ became the story to tell.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘