“There is no chin underneath Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.” “Chuck Norris’ tears can cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.” “How many push-ups can Chuck Norris do? All of them.” It seems almost inconceivable that the man who inspired these and thousands of other internet memes could have passed away so suddenly at the (for him) young age of 86. Sadly, that’s what happened last week to Chuck Norris, whose films blended the action and martial arts genres to make him one of the biggest box office draws of the 1970s and ’80s, and who then become a TV icon in the ’90s.
Born in the tiny southern border town of Ryan, Oklahoma in 1940, Carlos Ray Norris was the oldest of three brothers (sibling Wieland was killed while serving in Vietnam in 1970). By his own accounts a shy and unathletic teen, Norris enlisted in the Air Force after graduating high school in 1958. He was stationed in South Korea, where he was given the nickname “Chuck” and began learning the Korean martial art of Tang Soo Do. After transferring to California and leaving the military in 1962, Chuck considered a law enforcement career before opening his first martial arts school. He even development his own hybrid fighting style, Chun Kuk Do (later dubbed “The Chuck Norris System”). Among his celebrity students were Steve McQueen, Priscilla Presley, Bob Barker, and Donny and Marie Osmond.
In the mid-’60 Norris began competing in various tournaments. His first All-American Karate Championship came in 1967, and from 1968 to 1974 he was the reigning middleweight champ. His achievements included multiple black belts in judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Karate, Taekwondo, and Tang Soo Do. His notoriety led to Chuck’s big-screen debut, an uncredited henchman turn in the 1968 spy thriller The Wrecking Crew, starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm. Two years later he had a cameo as himself in an episode of the TV high school series Room 222.
Chuck said he was more interested in teaching martial arts than pursuing Hollywood stardom. But after Steve McQueen told him “If you can’t do anything else, there’s always acting,” he chose to take the plunge. Another key factor in his decision was a former training buddy, Bruce Lee (who served as “karate advisor” on The Wrecking Crew). Lee was looking for a foe to square off against him inside the Roman Colosseum in his latest movie, Way of the Dragon, and Norris fit the bill. Released in the U.S. in 1974 as Return of the Dragon, the film was a major hit. Its final showdown between Lee and Norris still ranks among the all-time great cinematic fight scenes.
After a cameo in Roger Corman’s drive-in quickie The Student Teachers and another villainous role in 1974’s Hong Kong-produced Yellow Faced Tiger (shown stateside in 1981 as Slaughter in San Francisco), Norris finally made his leading man bow as a vengeance-seeking trucker in 1977’s Breaker! Breaker!, followed one year later by Good Guys Wear Black, with Chuck as a Vietnam vet whose fellow Special Forces operatives are marked for elimination. Audiences loved it when Norris performed a flying kick through a car windshield. But when critics took him to task over his acting, his old pal McQueen advised him, “In Good Guys you talk too much…Let the character actors lay out the plot. Then, when there’s something important to say, you say it, and people will listen.”
Following 1979’s A Force of One, Norris worked at a steady pace throughout the 1980s. Among his films during the decade’s first half were the ninja-packed The Octagon (1980); An Eye for an Eye (1981); Silent Rage (1982); Forced Vengeance (also ’82); and Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), where Chuck played a Texas Ranger for the first time and had a classic fight against former Kung Fu star David Carradine. 1984 found the actor portraying an ex-Vietnam War POW who returns to Southeast Asia to rescue soldiers still held there in Missing in Action. The film’s success led to a pair of sequels featuring Norris as Col. James Braddock. The police drama Code of Silence (1985); the Cold War actioner Invasion U.S.A. (1985); The Delta Force (1986) with Lee Marvin; the Indiana Jones-like adventure Firewalker (1986) with Louis Gossett, Jr.; and the suspense thriller Hero and the Terror (1988) rounded out his ’80s movie oeuvre. He also managed to create and lend his voice to a 1986 animated TV mini-series, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, where he and his allies battled the villainous forces of VULTURE.
Norris took on a South American drug cartel in 1990’s Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection, and the next year was an undercover cop in The Hitman. He toned down the violence in two family-friendly efforts, Sidekicks (1993) and Top Dog (1995). Chuck’s brother Aaron Norris directed him playing an 1800s frontiersman brought back to life to battle a villainous logging magnate in the 1996 eco-themed adventure Forrest Warrior. For much of the ’90s, though, feature films took a backseat to the small screen, as Norris spent eight years cleaning up the Lone Star State in the CBS drama Walker, Texas Ranger. Starring as lawman Sgt. Cordell Walker, Norris and his allies (Clarence Gilyard, Noble Willingham, Sheree J. Wilson) took on a wide array of criminals, gangs, and other foes during the hit series’ 1993-2001 run. He also played a clandestine government agency operative in 2000’s made-for-TV The President’s Man and its 2002 follow-up.
Chuck’s 2000s and 2010s movie turns were limited, including a cameo as himself in 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and as part of the testosterone-soaked roster of 2012’s The Expendables 2. In 2006 Norris co-founded the short-lived World Combat League, a team kickboxing promotion. He tried his hand at being an author, releasing his autobiography Against All Odds: My Story in 2004; the frontier novel The Justice Riders in 2006; and the non-fiction Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America in 2008. An outspoken Hollywood right-winger and a dedicated Christian, Norris campaigned for conservative social causes and Republican politicians.
Married twice, Chuck had five children, including actor Mike Norris and NASCAR driver Eric Scott Norris. He spent most of his later years at his home in Hawaii, and it was there that he was hospitalized on March 19 for an undisclosed medical emergency before dying later that day. As one of the most popular online “Chuck Norris Facts” states, “Legends live forever. Chuck Norris lives longer.”