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BEVERLY HILLS -- A warning to Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan is looking over your shoulder.
Chan was amazed when he learned that Cruise did not do his own stunts in the summer blockbuster Mission: Impossible -- in particular that when Cruise's character charges through a plate-glass window with gallons of water cascading after him, the special-effects crew morphed Cruise's head onto a stuntman's body.
"I want to learn how they do all that computer stuff. It absolutely amazes me what Americans can do with special effects.
"In Hong Kong, we only know how to do the real thing," says Chan, who has the scars and x-rays to prove he's no computer-generated action hero.
In the 20 years that he's been China's top martial arts action star, Chan has broken almost every bone in his body. At the end of films, he provides outtakes which actually show him cracking ribs, breaking legs, dislocating shoulders and being cut, scraped and mangled as he bungles a death-defying stunt.
"American producers spend as much money on special effects as we do on an entire movie. We actors are the only special effects Hong Kong movies can afford."
Hong Kong action filmmakers don't even use air bags to break a stunt man's fall. Instead, they use tarpaulins piled on top of apple crates.
"I wouldn't trust an air bag. I've been falling on to apple crates since I was a nine-year-old boy (training at the Academy of Chinese Opera). Pain is an everyday occurrence on a Hong Kong movie and I have learned to live with pain."
In Asia, Chan's most expensive film remains his most successful movie. Supercop was made in 1992 for $11 million plus Chan's undisclosed fee.
It has grossed more than $150 million to date.
With its North American release Friday, Supercop is poised to add to that record.
Supercop was removed from the shelves, dusted off, given a new soundtrack and dubbed in English because of the box-office success earlier this year of Chan's Rumble in the Bronx.
"Because Rumble made so much money in America, they want to release all my old movies over here. I will only let them release the very best.
"Instead, I want to make new ones with one eye looking at the Asian market and the other looking at the American market. That means keeping things which have always worked and adding new things that America wants."
Chan has just completed filming A Nice Guy in Australia. He's hoping it will be released simultaneously in Asia and North America in February.
"I snapped my neck and back working on Nice Guy. I was in the hospital for days. Even though they couldn't find too much wrong other than bruises they didn't want to let me out.
"They said no human being should have survived what I went through."
But then, Jackie Chan is no ordinary guy. He's a 42-year-old bundle of energy. Even in interviews, he cannot sit still. He's up on a chair or in the centre of the room, illustrating martial-arts moves or explaining the plot of a movie he dreamed up while lying in his hospital bed in Australia.
"I give you drama, action and comedy. I box, wrestle and do almost every kind of martial arts."
Chan even conquers his worst fears.
"I'm very afraid of heights. In Supercop, my director (Stanley Tong) knew it was going to be hard to get me to hang from the helicopter and be whipped through the buildings of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"I had been talking for weeks about rewriting that portion of the movie. The day the stunt was scheduled, I told Stanley I didn't feel well.
"He pointed across the street. There were 100 journalists from all over Asia. Stanley had invited them.
"He knew I would not admit defeat in front of my fans."
Chan knows he can't continue with this reckless pace forever but he has no plans to retire just yet. "My big dream is for an American director like James Cameron to make a movie with me. He could use his knowledge of technology to make my stunts look even more spectacular."
And when Chan does retire, there might just be someone to take his place.
"My son is 12 years old now. He really wants to be an actor.
"I think he could be the next Bruce Lee or the next Jackie Chan."