Hong Kong — Once in a while we make mistakes as humans, but we hope it will not take us 22 years to realise our mistake. That is exactly what happened to Jackie Chan and Anita Yuen.
It happened in 1995 on the set of action sports film Thunderbolt where Chan and Yuen were paired as the leads.
It was reported that Chan had asked Yuen to stay back after a day of filming to rehearse their lines for the next day. However, Yuen had packed up and left once the cameras stopped rolling, as reported by 8days.sg.
Apparently, Chan was so upset with his co-star that he reported her to the Hong Kong Film Director’s Guild. From there, Chan found out that there were many directors who faced problems when working with Yuen. In fact, the consensus was that she’s “conceited” and “too full of herself”.
They also felt that Yuen, who was crowned Miss Hong Kong in 1990, had got full of herself after winning Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1993 and 1994 for her performances in C’est La Vie Mon Cheri and He’s A Woman, She’s A Man respectively.
Yuen had no idea that she had offended so many people until years later.
As for Chan, he did not stay silent about his dislike for Yuen. In an interview, Chan spoke about how much he abhorred one co-star whom he called “the most annoying actress”, but he did not mention names.
Most people thought Chan was referring to his former mistress Elaine Ng with whom he has not had the most cordial of relationships, but Chan confirmed years later that he was talking about Yuen.
In 2017, Yuen finally apologised to Chan for her actions.
Yuen’s husband, Julian Cheng, had dinner plans with Eric Tsang and Chan, so she decided to tag along. Chan and Yuen managed to bury the hatchet that night and Chan even gifted her a set of film negatives that were snapped during Thunderbolt./TISG