Jackie Chan Retiring? No, But Actor’s ‘BIG’ Action Movie Stunts Will Be Dead Soon Enough

Is Jack Chan retiring soon from acting in movies? There’s been plenty of confusion on that topic ever since the Cannes Film Festival a couple of years ago where Chan announced he was taking a break from big action movies. Now he’s clarifying that statement, saying his stunt work is not quite dead… yet.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, rumors of Jackie Chan’s death spread throughout 2013 and amazingly enough even Chan’s own manager believed it once. Chan said he received a phone where the family thought he’d died and the actor replied, “No… don’t worry, before I die I’ll call you.” Still, with age comes an incentive to slow down since stunts can be really risky even for the young. In fact, the action movie hero claims he’s only continuing his stunts for the fans.

If you watch Chan’s action movie Chinese Zodiac, you would think he’s not slowing down at all. He fights in the air while skydiving and becomes a human torpedo, which is all the “real Jackie Chan” and not special effects like with the Marvel superhero movies. Still, Chan admits that doing stunts is “not like it used to be,” and since turning 60 he’s had trouble bouncing back:

“My knee, my shoulder and my back, it’s not like it used to be, getting slower and hurting. Every time I do a stunt (heavy breathing), especially when you go home, the next morning, then you realize wow, it so hurts. Somehow my body would tell myself how much I should slow down. Now my body tells me to slow down thirty percent and probably in another two years, twenty more, now fifty percent. So slowly, slowly then I will tell the whole world, stop doing action.”

Chan also clarified what he meant by big actions movies by changing his emphasis on the word “big”:

“Probably my English is not very clear, I said, that’s my last big action movie. I should have said, that’s my last BIG action movie. I just said it very natural and normal, that’s my last big action movie. The second day, everybody say, ‘last big action movie,’ no actually last BIG action movie. Three days ago I just finished an action movie [called Dragon Blade] with John Cusack and Adrien Brody and I was fighting in the whole movie, but of course it was a different kind of fighting. It’s more like a sword fight, Roman with a Chinese general, this kind of fighting. Next time I will say my last physical action movie. Then for the future I can still do it like Stallone, doing punching or kicking with machine gun, grenades because my kind of action is more of somersaults, jumping around buildings, that’s not this kind of age you can do it my age, they’re getting higher.”

Jackie is hoping audiences will accept that he is both a good actor and a writer who does not necessarily need to be focused on actions stunts. Otherwise, even if he does star in an action movie, he will try to use stunt doubles as much as possible:

“I believe slowly, slowly I will let more people do it for me. Myself, I’ll only do the tight shot, close shot, really the audience can see me do it otherwise why the big wide shot, I’ll let someone else do it, yeah.”

Perhaps the next big action star will come from one of these movies? After all, Jackie Chan was once the stunt double for Bruce Lee, so perhaps lightning will strike twice.