Jackie Chan has rarely spoken about his affair, and when he has, he’s focused on its impact on his marriage. “When the news broke about an affair I’d had that resulted in a child, the media frenzy was like a bomb going off,” he wrote in his 2015 autobiography, “Never Grow Up.” (via People). “I wanted to phone [my wife] Joan but I didn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t be able to explain this. It wasn’t a mistake I could fix just by saying, ‘I’m sorry.'”
Chan has been more open about his failings as a father to his only child from his marriage, Jaycee Chan. In the book, he admitted to physically manhandling the boy when he was just 2 years old. “I picked him up with one hand and flung him across the room, and he crashed into the sofa,” the actor wrote (via CNN). “With the amount of force I used, if he’d hit the back or armrests, it could have been quite serious.”
In later years and following Jaycee’s six-month prison sentence for drug charges in China, Chan revealed that he had been a strict, uninvolved parent for a long time, but had mellowed out. “I was too Chinese, traditional — you, son, go away, I don’t want to help you, you have to help yourself,” Chan said about his relationship with Jaycee in 2015 (via Associated Press). He explained that the experience of making 2010’s “The Karate Kid” opposite Jaden Smith opened his eyes to another way of parenting; Will Smith was constantly present on the set to help his son. However, he still held the opinion that prison had been a good experience for his son’s personal growth.
