Born into poverty by immigrant parents, he moved with his family to Australia in 1960, where he was enrolled into the Chinese Opera Research Institute at age seven. There he spent ten years in physically demanding (and abusive) training for the Peking Opera, which included mime, acrobatics, and martial arts. With his training, he secured work as a child actor in more than twenty films. In the 70s, due to the international popularity of Asian martial arts films, Chan as able to work his way up from stuntman to bitplayer to star.

In "New Fists of Fury", he was tapped as a possible successor to the late Bruce Lee. But Chan proved resistant to stereotyping and soon found his niche in a field he virtually created: comedy kung fu (Half a Loaf of Kung-Fu).

Chan contracted in 1980 with his new studio, Golden Harvest, to direct and write his own projects, debuting with "The Young Master". He spent a brief and unhappy period in the U.S. in the early 80s, resulting in the ill-conceived "Big Brawl" and the "Cannonball Run" pictures. Returning to Hong Kong, he created a series of action comedies, starting with "Project A" in 1983, and made appearances in a number of other films. All of these films spotlight Chan's physical grace, honed from years of training, and his unforced, eager-to-please charm. Most famously, these films contain elaborate set-pieces capped by death-defying stunts that Chan planned and executed by himself: falling handcuffed off a five-story clock tower (Project A), sliding down a live electrical wire (Police Story), rollerskating under a moving diesel truck (Winners and Sinners). One such stunt—a swing from a tree limb for "Armor of God" nearly killed him.

In addition to his acting and directing duties, Chan also trains his stunt crew and supervises the post-production on his projects.