The Price of Fame: Jackie Chan, Billy Graham, Jane Fonda.

This week SBS continues its own “Price of Fame” season, with three episodes on Jackie Chan, Billy Graham & Jane Fonda.

Jackie Chan: Building An Icon
7:30pm Wednesday August 4 on SBS.
Jackie Chan is a true icon of Asian and Chinese culture. Over a 45-year-long career, he has carved a niche for himself as an actor, stuntman, director, and screenwriter, but also singer and formidable businessman. After starring in almost 200 films, Chan has reconciled fans of genre film and Hollywood blockbusters, whilst bridging the gap between Asian and Western cinema. Through film excerpts, archive footage and images, and an offbeat approach inspired by the visual codes of the golden age of kung-fu films, this documentary will take a look back at the creation of a popular hero who has come to be an icon for China, and the entire Asian continent.

Billy Graham
8:30pm Wednesday August 4 on SBS.
This feature explores the life and career of one of the best-known and most influential religious leaders of the 20th century. From modest beginnings on a North Carolina farm, Graham rose to prominence with a fiery preaching style, movie-star good looks and effortless charm. His early fundamentalist sermons harnessed the apocalyptic anxieties of a post-atomic world, exhorting audiences to adopt the only possible solution: devoting one’s life to Christ. Graham became an international celebrity who built a media empire, preached to millions worldwide, and had the ear of tycoons, royalty and presidents. At age 99, he died a national icon, estimated to have preached in person to 210 million people. Billy Graham examines the evangelist’s extraordinary influence on American politics and culture, interweaving the voices of historians, scholars, witnesses, family, and Graham himself, to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of a singular figure in the American experience.

Citizen Jane Fonda
7:30pm Thursday August 5 on SBS.
Very few Icons have at once embodied the myths of their own country while revealing its contradictions – heiress of the Hollywood star system and muse of the French auteur Cinema, Academy Award winning actress and committed producer, feminist and aerobic queen, activist and fearless businesswoman. In a lifetime, Jane Fonda may have reconciled all the facets of America without renouncing her own integrity. Through her portrait, the film tells a social and political story while drawing the picture of a typically American phenomenon.