Do we like Jackie Chan?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful about LGBTQ+ people or the planet turned up, but one contested political stance and a mixed good-person result keep him in the middle.
Jackie Chan started out as a child actor and became Hong Kong's biggest martial arts star, then a global one through hits like the Rush Hour films. In 2016 the Academy gave him an Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, for lifetime achievement. Decades of doing his own stunts is the legend, and it's a fair one.
The big personal stain is a 1999 affair. In his 2018 memoir Never Grow Up he calls it a “serious mistake”, writes that he had screwed up royally, and says he apologised to his wife at a family meeting and changed his will to leave everything to her. It's a public admission rather than a denial, which counts for something, though it's still a real blot.
On the harm check, nothing from his own mouth about LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines or climate turned up in our searches. The sticking point is politics. In 2014 he posted on Weibo that he was worried about Hong Kong's economic losses from the protests, and in 2019 he told CCTV he felt “pride in being Chinese everywhere I go” and backed a campaign to protect the national flag. Critics in Hong Kong called that tone-deaf; supporters would call it a loyalty he's never hidden. He has also questioned whether freedom is a good thing and called Hong Kong “very chaotic”, which went down badly.
A viral clip from a 2025 Macau concert showed him patting singer Joey Yung on the back, and some social media users accused him of inappropriate behaviour. Her manager told HK01 he was only reminding her to return to her seat for a group photo, and described him as very gentlemanly. Treat it as a social media pile-on rather than a finding, and note that Chan himself hasn't been quoted on it.
The latest noise is a death hoax: a doctored black-and-white photo labelled “1954-2026” spread on social media in September and was viewed about 8 million times. A community note called it false, and the Business Today piece points to his July visit to a Singapore school, where he met more than 900 students and teachers. He's alive and, by the look of it, still turning up.
On the good side, there's the honorary Oscar, and a December 2025 premiere in Beijing where he was reported moved to tears by a video about children in Gaza and urged people to raise awareness of children's rights. We went looking for his charity work and the dated, solid sourcing we could open was thin, so we won't pad it out.