Finding His Rhythm; Jaycee Chan, Jackie's son, is set to become a film star with 'The Drummer.' But all he wants is to play music.

Byline: Alexandra A. Seno

Jaycee Chan was filled with apprehension. He was in a hotel room trying to film a love scene for his new movie, "The Drummer," and it wasn't going smoothly. "'Wah, with 50 people staring, how can I do the job right?' " he recalls thinking. He had already banished his famous father, Jackie, from the set; the action star was passing the time in the bar downstairs, singing karaoke. Eventually the younger Chan found his groove and aced the scene. "At first there was a lot of pressure," he says. "Now I don't care." But audiences will: Chan, 24, gives a mesmerizing performance in "The Drummer," in which he plays a crime boss's troubled son who is transformed by Zen drumming. "I think Jaycee is going to be a very, very good actor," says Hong Kong upstart Kenneth Bi, the film's director and writer. "He's got stuff going on."

That's putting it mildly. This summer Chan stars in no fewer than three major Asian films. In addition to the independent "The Drummer"-- scheduled to premiere at Switzerland's Locarno International Film Festival in August--Chan plays a Hong Kong cop in "Invisible Target," a crowd-pleasing police thriller out this month. And he shows up as a young man having an illicit love affair during the Cultural Revolution in Jiang Wen's Venice Film Festival entry, "The Sun Also Rises." "Jaycee's friends couldn't believe this is the guy that they know," says Jiang, one of mainland China's most respected directors. "He gave a wonderful performance."

Chan manages to deflect comparisons to his father mainly by avoiding martial-arts roles. In fact, his first love is music. Growing up in Hong Kong, he would start dancing any time he heard a Michael Jackson song. As a teenager attending private school and then college in the United States, he wrote his own songs, and he eventually dropped out of the College of William & Mary in Virginia to return home and pursue a music career. More than anything, Chan, who plays drums, guitar and piano, thinks of himself as an aspiring recording artist. He readily admits that he plunged into the film industry three years ago because the Asian public expects singers to make movies (and actors to release CDs). Although he is delighted with the good reviews his acting has earned, the singing-idol wanna-be sees a downside: "Sometimes I feel I may be a better actor than a singer," he says wistfully.

Chan lives with his dad, and readily acknowledges that his genealogy has opened some doors. (His Taiwanese mother, Lin Feng-jiao, was a film star in the 1970s and 1980s.) "It's pretty nice having a dad like him," says ...