LEAP YEAR FOR CHAN\Bigger than big in Hong Kong, now he's jumping into U.S. market.

Byline: Carrie Rickey Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Here's the difference between the true lies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the unbelievable truths of the peerless Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan.

When Arnold pilots a helicopter to rescue Jamie Lee Curtis from that speeding convertible in "True Lies," it's the work of stuntmen and special-effects artists.

But when Chan hangs by his hangnails from a rope ladder tethered to a 'copter hovering above Kuala Lumpur in the 1992 film "Super Cop," it's really Jackie, acrobat, actor and human whirligig.

Jackie who?

Jackie Chan, funnier than Buster Keaton, more graceful than Fred Astaire, faster fists than Bruce Lee - and virtually unknown in America.

That's about to change today. "Rumble in the Bronx," a kung-fu comedy, will open on 1,500 screens in the United States. And while "Rumble," is by no means the greatest film from Chan, who performs his own stunts, at least it will give American audiences an idea why, without boasting, the 5-foot-9 action-comedy hero can say that in Asia he is bigger than "Jurassic Park."

"Where Jackie Chan IS known, he's bigger than Schwarzenegger and Stallone," says Variety reporter Len Klady of the biggest non-Hollywood star on the planet. Chan's gimmick is his megawatt personality. He's more comfortable as a daredevil martial arts clown than a macho hero brandishing a power weapon. His actions speak louder than words, which he hardly needs when describing the odd pair of heroes that have influenced the Hong Kong-born actor.

"Keaton," he announces, affecting the wide eyes and stone face of the silent comic.

"Fred Asta," he says, executing a dazzling step that leaves no doubt he's impersonating the ballroom dancer, not the wirehaired fox terrier.

In his films, he uses Keaton's deadpan when he wants to comically convey pain, as he does so memorably in 1994's "Drunken Master II" (which will be re-released this year by Miramax), when his character is hurled onto a bed of burning coals and performs an expressionless jig. He dances the Astaire sidestep in "Police Story" (1985), when he eludes an army of bad guys in an outdoor shopping mall.

"I learn from Buster Keaton. Now Americans learn from me," observes the tireless entertainer. "I think American audience is tired of special effects."

"Nothing to learn from modern Americans," he says dismissively, but then he corrects himself.

"About acting, I learn from Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino," he says, first shrinking himself to Hoffman scale, insular and implosive, then exploding with the jitter of arms and shuffling feet that is Pacino.

"About comedy, I learn from Donald Duck," he says, wriggling his bill and his butt like the malcontent mallard. "I put cartoon in real life."

Ask the difference between his action heroes and those of his U.S. counterparts, and Chan replies in imperfect but eloquent English, "I'm human being. When gun put on me, I'm scared. American hero, he not scared."

Born Chen Gang Shen to Chinese immigrants newly arrived in Hong Kong, Chan was not someone expected to succeed - let alone exceed - Bruce Lee as martial-arts hero par excellence.

"Very poor family," he says of his parents. Nicknamed A-Puo, or "cannonball," Jackie was a roly-poly baby whose parents could barely afford to feed him. They nearly sold him for $26 to the British doctor who delivered him, he says.

When he was an infant, Chan moved with his parents to Canberra, Australia, where they have worked as maid and cook in the Hong Kong embassy for 40 years. When Jackie was 7, his parents sent him back to Hong Kong and enrolled him in the China Dramatic Academy, where for 10 years he was educated in the art of Peking Opera. Rising daily at dawn and going to sleep at midnight, Chan became a Confucius of acrobatics, mime and swordplay, but missed out on the educational basics.

By the time Chan graduated from the Dramatic Academy in 1971, the Peking Opera was about as relevant in Hong Kong as vaudeville was in the States. Ten years of somersaults, backflips and swordplay prepared Chan for ... movie stuntwork.

He leaped off buildings and walls in dozens of kung-fu films as well as the occasional Bruce Lee flick. When Lee died under mysterious circumstances that year, Chan was groomed as his successor. In seven quickies made between 1976 and 1978, he tried to be Bruce Lee. He failed.

Then he decided to be himself. Where Lee was an impassive superhero, Chan was an expressive Everyman - with some superheroic capabilities.

The movie in which Jackie Chan became Jackie Chan was 1978's "Drunken Master," a delirious kung-fu comedy in which his stumblebum character drinks rice wine and mows down villains like so many bowling pins. He wrote, directed, and starred in his next two films, "The Fearless Hyena" (1979) and "The Young Master" (1980), which broke box-office records in Hong Kong and made him a star in Japan.

Naturally, Hollywood beckoned. But although his stunts were great, Chan looked out of place in the gangster drama "The Big Brawl" (1980), a Depression saga set in '30s Chicago. And then ...

"I come to Hollywood, make "Cannonball Run" film. I hope audience that see Burt Reynolds and Farrah Fawcett also see me. I see poster for movie: 'Burt Reynolds!' Big letters! 'Sammy Davis Jr.!' Big letters! My name? he jokes. "It small, in corner. In Asia, it was 'Jackie Chan!' Big letters! Burt Reynolds? He small, in corner."

Chan returned to Hong Kong in 1982, and embarked on screen adventures that make Eastwood, Schwarzenegger and Stallone look like so many pantywaists.

His most celebrated stunt, in "Project A" (1983), paid homage to silent film star Harold Lloyd. Cornered by pirates, Chan's character grabs for the minute hand on a clock tower, dangles, then lets go, plunging through two cloth awnings hundreds of feet below. He filmed the sequence in one take, with one fixed camera angle, to assure the audience that no doubles or technical enhancements were used. "Too much camera movement makes audience dizzy," he explains.

During the credit sequence of Chan films, he shows audiences his flubs. At the end of "Rumble," you see him break his ankle leaping from a bridge onto a Hovercraft.

It's taken years for Americans to appreciate the framing and rhythms of Hong Kong movies. But, increasingly, U.S. filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are influenced by Chan's use of the still camera and wide angle, which focus the audience on what's moving inside the frame, not on externals.

"Before, everybody learn from Americans," Chan explains. "But now American movies have nothing to teach us."

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Photo (1--Cover--Color) GET READY TO 'RUMBLE' Action dynamo Jackie Chan takes aim at his greatest stunt yet landing a hit in America. (2) Hong Kong action legend Jackie Chan, holding onto a runaway Hovercraft in New Line Cinema's "Rumble in the Bronx," draws on his Peking Opera training to do his own stunts. (3) Chan's flying fists dispatch a gang member in "Rumble." The actor, who cemented his style in 1978's "Drunken Master," cites Buster Keaton and Fred Astaire as his primary influences. (4)"Before, everybody learn from Americans. But now American movies have nothing to teach us." Jackie Chan "Rumble in the Bronx"