Jackie Chan Returns to America Screens With 'The Foreigner'

Jackie Chan once held 15 jobs in a single movie, which makes him the Guinness World Record holder for most credits on a single film. The star, now 63, returns to screens in a somber performance in a new movie, The Foreigner, where he plays a grief-stricken father seeking revenge on a rogue IRA faction whose bomb killed his daughter, GQ explains.

This is Chan’s first high-profile U.S. movie release since 2010, excluding Kung Fu Panda and The Lego Ninjago Movie, where he voiced characters. In 2010, he played Jaden Smith’s mentor in a reboot of The Karate Kid.

According to GQ, Chan drove from Beijing to the Panlong Valley to visit his International Stunt Training Base and talk to foreigners about the new movie.

Chan owns a complex of buildings, one of which houses the International Stunt Training Base. Other buildings in the complex include a chapel and a Spanish-style housing development.

GQ writes that Chan is happy to give tours, showing a painting of himself doing Kung Fu on a narrow rock overlooking a canyon, or discussing the glass atrium that has a 60-million-year-old tree inside a glass booth (inside the atrium). GQ also writes that Chan will give you things, and it is not an option whether or not you take them.

Chan speaks about five languages very well, but GQ writes that he’s always made himself understood through movement and that “he’s been telling stories with his body his entire life.” Even when he talks or tells stories, Chan’s body moves to emphasize his points.

Many in the U.S. might have lost track of Chan since Rush Hour. He has been producing products that are tailored specifically toward multiplex theaters now found in mainland China. In 2017, according to Forbes, Chan was the world’s 39th-highest-paid entertainer. He also has a large portfolio of business interests outside movies, and has become more vocally pro-China.

GQ writes that The Foreigner is a “the first must-see Jackie movie in years” and is a “builds on the fact that Jackie is not as young as he used to be, instead of pretending it’s not obvious.” Chan admits that if he is going to stay in the film industry, he will have to change. So he’s looking for a ” different script, different character, different Jackie Chan,” reports GQ.