By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
September 6, 2000
James Sie has Jackie Chan’s moves down pat.
Vocally, anyhow.
As Chan’s voice double in the animated series “Jackie Chan Adventures,” which will air at 10 a.m. Sundays on WCIU-Channel 26 starting this weekend, the former Chicago actor captures Chan’s energetic nuances so well that the casual listener would have a difficult time figuring out whether it was Chan or Sie doing the talking.
Of course, there are challenges to voicing a cartoon character based on a star. Dubbing Scooby Doo is one thing. Being the voice of a real-life action hero is another.
“Initially I did have a lot of trepidation about doing a voice of someone who’s that well-known,” says Sie, 37. “Jackie is an international star. People know what he sounds like. But I think what the [producers] were looking for is someone who could sound enough like him to be believable, but also with a little less of an accent so that younger kids could understand what he’s saying.
“I heard that I actually beat out several people who had dubbed him before [in his Hong Kong films]. I guess I captured his spirit and humor, which is very fun and warm. He’s very animated.”
Sie got to tap into that animated side while imitating the sounds Chan makes during the fight sequences.
“It’s really funny because if you watch his movies, he does them all the time,” Sie says. “We have a lot of scenes where we make noise that isn’t dialogue. So you’ll have all of us in this room making all these fighting noises.”
Born and raised in New Jersey and educated at Northwestern University, Sie was the artistic director at Lifeline Theater on the North Side. There he acted and wrote popular adaptations of the children’s books Bunnicula and A Wrinkle in Time.
When Sie moved to Los Angeles three years ago, he faced a culture shock of sorts.
“The scary thing about L.A. is the competition,” he says, phoning from Los Angeles. “In Chicago, there are about five male Asian-American actors and the same five of us show up at all the auditions, whether the role is for a little kid or a 50-year-old man. In L.A., they can request a lean, 140-pound Japanese or Korean man with a crew cut and they’ll get a bunch of actors that’ll fit the bill. There is a lot more competition here. But I think that my theater training in Chicago has paid off for me. I feel ready.”
That doesn’t mean that Hollywood is necessarily ready for Sie and his fellow Asian-American actors, he says.
“I’m hoping this will change, but it’s not easy for us,” he says. “I just went to a meeting at the Screen Actors Guild. Asian-American actors accounted for just 2.2 percent of all roles last year. And almost none of those were in lead or recurring guest starring roles.
“Luckily, I have an agent who submits me for things that aren’t Asian specific. But it’s still extremely difficult.”
Sie has appeared in some high-profile projects, such as the films “U.S. Marshals,” “Chain Reaction” and “Bats,” as well as the TV series “Providence,” “Family Law” and “Dharma & Greg.”
“I paid my dues, though,” he says, laughing. “I played a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant on `it’s like . . . you know’ and that was OK. But my agent feels like it’s time to move beyond that, and I’d have to agree.”
One of the pleasant surprises he found on “Jackie Chan Adventures,” he says, is that all the lead Asian characters were voiced by Asian-American actors.
“The producers made a conscious effort to do that, and they didn’t have to since no one can see what we look like,” he says. “That shows promise, I think.”
