Not many people dare to admit that they have behaved badly, that they have been fools, let alone try to change, not to make amends because that is impossible, but improving as a person from anagnorisis is more difficult than it seems. Jackie Chan claims he got to that point when he nearly caused terrible damage to his family.
The iconic actor delved into this in his biography, Never Grow Up, as one of the possible avenues of atonement. He wanted to expose himself as a detestable being who had nevertheless managed to find the path of change… Although to say that is not in his judgment but in the judgment of the public critics, who still have fresh other facts that the actor did not want to talk about in his memoirs.
The Absurdity Life of the New Rich
Jackie Chan confessed to being from a poor family background, he was also a problematic child who was expelled from school many times; and as a consequence, he was put in a special school where he learned to act and sing. Still, he had no basic education; he even says that his credit cards are not signed because he doesn’t know how to do it.
Therefore, when he began to make a name for himself as a stuntman and his pockets began to fill, he got used to carrying a lot of cash and surrounding himself with people to witness his economic solvency. When he met his current wife, one of these so-called friends convinced him that she was a gold digger.
Chan married his wife because she got pregnant, so, his horrible suspicions increased. His behavior with her was despicable, he mistreated her, limited her financially, humiliated her, and drank non-stop. Infidelities, of course, were of all kinds, with lots of escorts and other women suffering the same treatment. And while he was getting drunk and high every day, snitching on expensive cars and showering his friends with gifts, the women who interacted with him were treated like dirt, especially his wife.
Violence and Abuse
In those days when he thought his wife was his worst enemy, he argued strongly, so much so that his firstborn son, just months old, paid the consequences. Jackie Chan took him by the little arm and threw him, literally, to the other side of the room.
Before the cameras and the characters he played, Chan was always charismatic and a defender of justice. But this was just fiction; in his real life, he was plagued with vices, money, and an unjustified contempt for those who, supposedly, were the pillar of his entire career.
However, it was at that moment when he realized that he was being a real jerk and that the innocent, like his wife and young son, were paying the consequences of his inability to handle fame and fortune. So he decided to change, as it was a true miracle that baby Jaycee fell on a couch and was unharmed.
Jackie Chan’s Dark Secrets
Although he used his biography as a confessional, there are two points that he did not touch at all. One was the charges his son faced for possession and use of substances, a matter in which Jackie Chan did not want to be involved; he simply ignored it, as if his son was a stranger, even though he could’ve been facing a death sentence.
The other issue is the homosexuality of his youngest daughter, Etta Ng. The news that his daughter was a lesbian did not sit well with either the actor or her mother -one of Jackie Chan’s many affairs-, who, in absurd closed-mindedness, threw her out of the house.
Etta confessed in a video on YouTube with her partner that she lived with her under a bridge, that her father had never approached her in her entire life, and that they had judged her harshly. She also talked about how hard it was to have Jackie Chan as a father, a monster compared to his always smiling and kind image.
The fact that Jackie Chan wanted to free his conscience by confessing everything in a book does not include the bad job he has done as a father figure. A sign of this is that he did not even touch the subject of his children; therefore, it can be concluded that his road to redemption has not really begun.
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
