HOLLYWOOD -- In Disney's Around the World in 80 Days, which opens Wednesday, the sidekick takes centre stage.

In Jules Verne's 1973 adventure novel, the valet Passepartout was very much a secondary character to the film's hero, the Englishman Phileas Fogg.

With Jackie Chan as Passepartout, Around the World is the kind of buddy movie that allowed Chan to cross the Atlantic.

British comedian Steve Coogan, who plays Phileas, doesn't mind sharing the limelight.

"When I was a drama student, we were amazed at what Jackie did in his Police Story movies," says Coogan. "We marvelled at his physical and comedic skills.

"I have to admit I was kind of scared at first at the prospect of working with a legend."

Coogan, 38, says "Jackie was marvellous. He immediately makes you feel welcome and comfortable in his presence.

"You still marvel at what he does. When Jackie flies through the air in our film, he's really doing it. It's not some computer trickery."

Coogan says this is what makes Around the World special in an era where whole sets are added to a film by computers.

"When we filmed in Thailand, which doubles for China and India, they built us whole villages. When I walk on the Great Wall, we flew to China and filmed for a week. The locations and sets are as real as Jackie's stunts."

STILL GOING STRONG

Chan, who turned 50 this past April, insists he's not about to retire from the stunt-heavy movies that made him famous.

"Action and comedy are my favourite kind of movies, so I'll keep on doing them as long as I can.

"Fortunately, I have a very good and very strong training, which is why I can still do these stunts at my age. I also still train every day to keep my body limber.

"People are amazed until I explain to them that this is my life. It's my career. I can't stop training. One day I'll have to play the old master in films, but I'll still be doing stunts."

Director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer) says "Jackie Chan stunts take a long, arduous time to film and we factored that into our budget.

"We made sure he had all the time he needed to make them spectacular."

Chan says, like with most of his films, his performance in Around the World is a tribute to actors such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

"I grew up watching silent movies with these men in them and even when they were talking it might as well have been a silent movie because I didn't understand English.

"What I understood was their body language, which made me laugh and cry."

WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Coogan feels Verne's novels are timeless and therefore can be remade as films decade after decade.

"Jules Verne was way ahead of his time. He conceived of a submarine for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

"My character is more Verne than he is the character Verne created for the novel, where he was simply this rich guy.

"In our movie, Phileas is an inventor who's so far ahead of his time that his contemporaries mock him. That's how he gets into the bet that he can go around the world in 80 days."

Coogan says he loves the fact "there is a true sense of humour in Phileas' inventions in our movie. Our flying machine is a dismantled boat. That kind of thing. In this way, audiences get to laugh along with the characters."

Phileas was played by David Niven in the 1956 version of Around the World in 80 Days.

Coraci says he knew he needed another quintessential Englishman to play Phileas.

"I loved Steve in 24 Hour Party People and knew he was the perfect person to play Phileas. Everyone in Britain knows who Steve is.

"Around the World is going to introduce him to the world."

Chan says it was no real stretch for him to play this new version of Passepartout.

"In our movie, he is this Chinese guy who feels like a real fish-out-of-water in foreign countries, and that's me.

"It's always been me since the first day I decided to act outside of China."

Around the World was filmed in Thailand, Germany, Austria, England, Paris, New York and California. "In every location we filmed, people went crazy. They wanted to catch a glimpse of Jackie," says Coraci

"He's like all The Beatles rolled into one. That's the kind of international celebrity Jackie enjoys."


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