Chuck Norris
Violence is my last option.
— Chuck Norris
CHUCK NORRIS is the ninety-eight-pound weakling who made good on his adolescent daydreams of buffing up and drubbing the bullies who taunted him. Born Carlos Ray Norris to an Irish mother and a Cherokee Indian father whose occupation most often reads "alcoholic" in biographies, Norris escaped the ridicule of being called "half-breed" by enlisting in the Air Force. He was stationed in Korea for three years, where he dedicated himself to the study of karate and judo: he earned a black belt in the former, a brown belt in the latter, and a nickname, "Chuck."
Upon his return to the United States, Norris found success as a karate teacher. In 1968, he opened a chain of thirty-two karate schools, where he taught the likes of Steve McQueen and members of the Osmond family. That same year, he began his seven-year reign as World Middleweight Karate Champion. Encouraged by former pupil McQueen, Norris took a shot at movie stardom with only a bit part in a soft-porn flick under his belt. In his first big roles, he played a villain to Bruce Lee's hero, getting his ass (and head) soundly kicked in two films, Return of the Dragon and Game of Death, the latter of which was completed, after Lee's death, by using stand-ins and old footage of Lee. Norris spent the later part of the seventies laying the groundwork for his stoic action-hero antics with Breaker, Breaker, Good Guys Wear Black, and Force of One.
Norris wisely stayed away from too much dialogue in his films, but opted for fast-paced action and patriotic story lines. He made three Missing in Action films, in which he plays an ex-P.O.W. out to bring back the boys from Vietnam. In Invasion U.S.A. (Norris also wrote the screenplay), he single-handedly fights off an army of Soviet terrorists. Needless to say, critics have never been fond of Norris's movies, and none of them could be considered blockbusters, but their modest box-office take was enough to build a steady fan base. Now, all those fans can reap their weekly reward: Walker, Texas Ranger, Norris's first TV series outing. The show has done amazingly well for its deadly Saturday-night time slot.
Norris has lived a little hard for the past few years. He divorced his wife of thirty years and "kinda did the Hollywood scene for a while." A lesser man could have been undone by it all. But Norris has his Zen philosophy and his ass-kicking physical stamina to support him in times of crisis. With that kind of inspiration, Norris may still be in shape for his style of slam-bam celluloid well into his sixties.
[Home]
