The action star has just inked a record-breaking deal to star in a Chinese-language film called The Warlords.

He’ll make $13M for the film, which is, like, Maddox Jolie-Pitt’s lunch money, but it’s the largest sum ever paid to an actor for a Chinese-language film.

The film’s total budget is $40M. “Without Jet Li, we would not dare to invest $40 million in a Chinese-language film,” Xinhua news agency quoted director Peter Chan as saying. Li was a “guarantee” for global sales, Chan said.

(Li actually broke his own record here — he held the existing record for his role in Hero.)

Okay, I’m clearly in the wrong line of work. Someone teach me Chinese and kung fu, stat. Hey, I had a yellow stripe in Tae-Kwon-Do when I was in fourth grade, and I love mu-shu chicken. How hard can the rest of it be?

“When Jackie Chan and I first wanted to work together 15 years ago, our passion was at its peak. … Our desire to succeed was very strong. Now we joke that when we watch [our upcoming film] `The Forbidden Kingdom’ our combined age is 100 … How intense are the battle scenes? My mentality is to not have high expectations.”

- Jet Li, about audience expectations for his upcoming film with Jackie Chan