Jackie Chan Quotes

My background is inseparable from my work.

I've done everything. I've been ring crew, I've been driver for a blind promoter, I've been a valet, I've been a referee, I've been a ring announcer, I've been a corporate officer, play-by-play man, blah, blah, blah. No one has been on my journey.

I don't regret doing any of my films. All of them have been great learning experiences, and they have contributed to making me what I am today.

Gaining my education from practical experience certainly benefited me. If I had gone on to be a lawyer, my life wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting.

I have a lot of influences. I'm American-schooled. I'm classically trained. I'm a pretty universal student, if you will. I have a lot of degrees, which really don't pay the rent. I have two doctorate degrees, I have a bachelor's degree, but I'm still a cook.

In the winter of 2012, as my fiftieth birthday approached, I began to write what turned into my autobiography, a look at my own life through the lens of food.

I like to refer to my years with the Angels as the foundation of my career.

It's been a long career, and I've made some mistakes along the way.

I'm in a position to look back at my life, and I realized there were a number of experiences that needed to be documented.

A lot has been written about Tony Perkins and myself and I figured, Let's get it straight. I had a relationship with Tony for two to three years, but those are only threads in the tapestry of my whole life.

I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.

As far as feeling freedom in my career now versus five years ago... I think if I feel any more free it's simply because of the experiences that I've had, and the wisdom I've accumulated from that time.

I left school at 16 and skipped university to work, initially as a waiter. I think I missed out on what would have been great years.

Journalists like to say I started off sweeping the pottery floors. But it was just a short-lived part time job doing that after I left school.

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

Faces are the ledgers of our experience.

I've been asked to write an autobiography, and I've started it a couple of times, on different angles, and maybe one day I will, but you know what? There's time for that because I'd like to have the whole story.

I told my whole life story in my book.

I was born in Paris, and my mother was a French teacher, but then I rebelled against my upbringing and studied Spanish in school. So now I just speak bad French and bad Spanish.

I've never been a career builder. I didn't go to drama school and hardly went to any school at all.

I don't really think about having had a hard life. It was just my life, and it's all I knew. It made me who I am - all the good and bad - and it's where all of the songs on Here For The Party came from. I've lived them all.

So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.

The challenge of life, I have found, is to build a resume that doesn't simply tell a story about what you want to be, but it's a story about who you want to be.