Jackie Chan has made an emotional confession about death, saying that he fears that he is “going to die” before performing dangerous stunts. The 71-year-old action star has admitted he always gets nervous before filming a big sequence and worries about something going wrong. Jackie started his career as a stuntman before turning to acting, and insisted he’s still capable of doing his own martial arts scenes now that he’s in his seventies. He previously experienced a stunt going wrong on the set of his 2020 movie, Vanguard, when he became trapped underwater while filming a Jet Ski chase scene. A behind-the-scenes video showed the actor emerging from the water and saying: “Wow, this scared me to death.”
During an appearance at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, he said: “I’m no Superman. I am scared. Before a stunt, I go: ‘Am I going to die this time?'”
He continued: “The audience doesn’t know about the rain, the producer, or that the budget was cut. They just want a good movie. I always remember that, so I try to make every scene perfect. I think old movies were better than [what we have] today.
“Now, these big studios, they are not filmmakers – they are business guys. It’s very difficult to make a good movie these days.”
The film’s director, Stanley Tong, for Vanguard, told USA Today: “We wanted to show the outtakes to prove that even though Jackie is 66 years old, he’s a professional actor and loves action.”
Speaking about the Jet Ski incident, Tong said, “He was stuck under the water because of a big rock behind him, and he couldn’t come up. I was very scared.
“But as the safety people picked Jackie out of the water. I saw him breathing and moving. I said, ‘Thank God!’ I was crying at that time. Jackie said that the current was so strong he couldn’t move, and he got pushed against the big rock. Jackie said that all he could think of was: ‘Stay calm’…”
He then concluded: “But that night at the hotel, after dinner, we had coffee. He was holding onto the coffee cup, and his hand was shaking. He told me he was really scared.”