On paper the stunt didn’t appear to be especially difficult; jumping from a castle wall to a nearby tree, but disaster struck when the branch he’d leapt to gave way under his weight, sending him crashing back down to earth. Chan hit his head on a rock as he landed, fracturing his skull and sending a fragment of it into his brain, causing a haemorrhage. He was rushed to hospital where he’d undergo successful brain surgery, though he was left with permanent hearing loss in his right ear. Jackie Chan is a lifelong martial artist who initially trained in Kung Fu and acrobatics, but would eventually train in many different disciplines, including hapkido, wing chun, karate, judo, taekwondo and jeet kune do. In his late teens he became a stuntman, working on many movies in Hong Kong, including some of Bruce Lee’s movies, before eventually working his way up the ladder to become a lead actor. Not content just to take the lead role in his movies, Chan would go on to direct, produce and sometimes even write many of his films as well as perform and help choreograph his own stunts and fight scenes. By the time he reached Hollywood, Jackie Chan already had already starred in dozens of movies spanning more than thirty years. On U.S soil the rules were different though, with all kinds of safety rules, regulations and insurance claims making it virtually impossible to deliver the kind of stunt work that had helped make him famous in the first place. Nevertheless, Chan has gone on to star in well over 30 Hollywood movies in the years since then, and is still going strong at 61 years of age.