In No 'Rush' for Six Years, Tucker Returns to Acting

It's been six years since his last movie. Six years since he tossed on a police uniform, stood next to Jackie Chan and kick-boxed a few bad guys.

Six years that Chris Tucker has spent, he says, "enjoying my celebrity."

Which sounds like an awfully indulgent hiatus. And sure enough, when he was arrested two years ago for reckless driving in Georgia, he was behind the wheel of a shiny new Bentley Continental.

But that incident is an anomaly for the 34-year-old comedian. He says he was late for church the day he was pulled over. And when he talks about "enjoying his celebrity," he is talking about the liberty to take years off, lend his name and voice to the underrepresented, to worry about problems bigger than his own.

So he makes no apologies for the delay between "Rush Hour 2" and "Rush Hour 3."

"It took a while because I was doing things around the world that were really important to me," he said via phone from Atlanta, his hometown. "I wasn't controlled by making movies and getting as much money as I could. I was just living a little bit . . . going to villages with no clean water, going to Ethiopia with Bono."

You know, things like that.

And even as Tucker returns to the role of James Carter -- and his Laurel-and-Hardy-esque partnership with Chan -- it's Africa and his foundation he is most eager to discuss.

The "Rush Hour" franchise, though, deserves credit for that, too.

Almost a decade ago, when Tucker was hitting his stride as a stand-up comedian and actor, he got the call to do a cop comedy in the tradition of "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop."

"I liked the concept and the idea of me and Jackie Chan. I knew it would be great for me coming from a stand-up background and being a physical comedian," he recalled.

He was less sure after his first meeting with the Hong Kong action movie legend. Tucker talked through the first hour of their introduction; Chan barely nodded in response.