HONG KONG, April 2 — A close friend of Jackie Chan has come to his defence after his complicated private life was laid bare in the tabloids last week.
Film producer Tiffany Chen said the action star is “a man of affection who has cried over” his 17-year-old love child, Etta Ng, many times.
According to Ming Pao Daily News, Chen made her feelings known to reporters yesterday, two days after former beauty queen Elaine Ng and lawyer Mary Jean Reimer said at a press conference that Ng had not received a cent from Chan, despite well-documented financial difficulties.
Ng and Chan had an affair in 1998, during which Etta was conceived.
Although it is unclear if she was speaking with the approval of the actor, Chen implied that Ng might have seen certain advantages in having Chan’s baby.
“Someone was determined to give birth,” she was quoted as saying. “Etta is the most innocent, most pitiful one because she had no choice. Her mother had a choice.”
As such, she hinted that Chan might reach out to his daughter when the time is right.
“When Etta is big enough, 21, I believe Jackie will give Etta money, but not her mummy,” Chen added.
Etta became the subject of tabloid scrutiny once more after Ng was arrested on March 24 on suspicion of criminal intimidation after Etta reported her mother to the police for a domestic incident.
After her arrest, Ng said she had quarrelled with Etta because she saw a packet of sedatives in her daughter’s room, which the girl insisted she had not used.
The pair have a tempestuous relationship. In 2015, Ng was arrested for child abuse, amid talk of a drinking problem.
That same year, Etta gave an interview in which she spoke about Chan for the first time.
She was quoted as saying that she regarded the film star as a stranger and was “far from forgiving him after all these years”.
“He is not my dad. I have no feelings for him. He is my biological father but he is not in my life,” she added.
Etta is understood to have left Hong Kong on Wednesday, but her current whereabouts are unknown.
Chan and his wife Joan Lin, whom he married in 1982 have a son, Jaycee. A successful actor in his own right, the 34-year-old also made the headlines for the wrong reasons in August 2014, when he was arrested in China after a police raid on his home for drugs. He was jailed for six months and subsequently released.
