Chan was born to impoverished parents in Hong Kong. The family moved to Canberra, Austl., when Chan was six, but the following year his parents sent him back to Hong Kong to attend a strict boarding school that trained students for jingxi. From ages 7 to 17 he studied acrobatics, singing, martial arts, and mime—skills that launched him into a position with a professional tumbling troupe and landed him bit roles as a child actor and, later, as a stuntman. The independent film producer Lo Wei, hoping to find a successor to the late Bruce Lee, cast him in a series of lacklustre kung fu movies in 1976–78. Rather than ape Lee's gritty persona, Chan utilized his own form of bumbling physical comedy in his first successful films, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978).

Chan made his directorial debut in Young Master (1980), with the production company Golden Harvest, which he subsequently helped transform into Hong Kong's largest movie conglomerate. In the early 1980s, at the time when he was making an unsuccessful foray into English-language cinema, he moved beyond traditional martial arts period movies to modern action-adventure films, such as Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985), along with their sequels. The films showcased his directorial talent for fight and stunt choreography. His own stunts were often extraordinarily dangerous; he nearly perished from a fall in Armour of God (1986) that fractured his skull and impaired his hearing.

In addition to acting, Chan pursued a career in the Hong Kong music industry, releasing 11 original albums between 1984 and 2002. He founded the Jackie Chan Charitable Organization in 1998, which, among other projects, offers scholarships to Hong Kong youths, and he worked as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.