Misplaced Pages

Chuck Norris

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tv316 (talk | contribs) at 23:18, 22 January 2006 (Reverting Vandalism). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 23:18, 22 January 2006 by Tv316 (talk | contribs) (Reverting Vandalism)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This article is about the actual person. For the jokes, see Chuck Norris Facts.
Chuck Norris being presented with the "Veteran of the Year" award at the American Veteran awards show

Carlos Ray Norris Jr., known as Chuck Norris, (born March 10, 1940), is a martial artist, an American action movie actor and Hollywood star.

Biography

A native of Ryan, Oklahoma, Norris has two younger brothers, Wieland and Aaron Norris, the latter of which is a Hollywood producer. Norris was born to an alcoholic Cherokee Indian father and Irish mother. When Norris was ten, his parents divorced and he later relocated to Torrance, California with his mother and brothers. Norris describes his childhood as downbeat. He was unathletic, shy, and scholastically mediocre. Kids would taunt his mixed ethnicity — wistfully he wanted to beat up his tormenters. He finished high school and soon married his girlfriend, Diane Holechek. In 1958 Norris joined the United States Air Force as a Military Policeman and was sent to Osan Air Base South Korea. It was in South Korea that Norris acquired the nickname Chuck and began his training in Tang Soo Do. When he returned to the states he continued to act as an MP at March Air Force Base California.

Norris was discharged in August of 1962 without seeing combat. He worked for the Northrop corporation and opened a chain of karate schools, which the son of Steve McQueen attended. In 1963, his son Mike was born; a second son, Eric, followed in 1965.

In 1970, his younger brother Weiland was killed in Vietnam. Norris later dedicated his Missing in Action films to his brother's memory.

At a martial arts demonstration in Long Beach, Norris met the soon to be famous Bruce Lee, who would ingrain Norris in martial arts history forever with his portrayal as Bruce Lee's nemesis in the Way of the Dragon.

In 1988, after 30 years of marriage, Norris and Holechek divorced. He married again in 1998, this time to former model Gena O'Kelley, and she delivered twins in 2001: Dakota Alan Norris, a boy, and Danilee Kelly Norris, a girl.

Rise to fame

In 1968, Norris became Middleweight Karate champion (non-contact), a title he held for seven consecutive years. In 1969, he won Karate's triple crown for the most tournament wins of the year, and the fighter of the year award by Black Belt magazine. It was also in 1969 that Norris made his acting debut, in the Dean Martin movie The Wrecking Crew. In 1972, he acted alongside Bruce Lee in the movie Way of the Dragon, and in 1974, McQueen encouraged him to begin acting classes at the MGM Studio.

Norris' first starring role was 1977's Breaker, Breaker!, and subsequent films such as The Octagon (1980), An Eye for an Eye (1981), and Lone Wolf McQuade proved his increasing box office bankability. In 1984, Norris starred in Missing in Action, the first of a series of POW rescue fantasies produced by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and released under their Cannon Films banner. Over the next four years, Norris became Cannon's most prominent star, appearing in eight films, including Code of Silence, The Delta Force and Firewalker, in which he co-starred with Academy Award winner Louis Gossett, Jr.

Walker, Texas Ranger

File:NorrisAsWalker.jpg
Chuck Norris as Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger

By the close of the 1980s, Cannon Films had faded from prominence, and Norris' star appeal seemed to go with it. He reprised his Delta Force role for MGM, who had acquired the Cannon library after the latter's Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Norris went on to make several more largely ignored films before making a transition to television. In 1993, he began shooting the series Walker, Texas Ranger, which lasted eight years on CBS and continued in heavy syndication on other channels.

On October 16th, 2005, CBS Premiered the Sunday night "Movie of the Week" Walker Texas Ranger: Trial By Fire. The production was a continuation of the series, and not scripted to be a reunion movie. Norris reprised his role as Cordell Walker for the movie. He has stated that future Walker Texas Ranger "Movie of the Week" projects are expected.


Popular Culture

  • Late Night with Conan O'Brien's parent company, NBC, acquired Universal in early 2004, giving O'Brien permission to show footage of Walker, Texas Ranger without paying royalties. O'Brien and his writers subsequently created a new segment in which O'Brien shows short, out of context clips for comedic purposes. The "Walker, Texas Ranger Lever" quickly became one of the most popular segments on Late Night, with Norris himself showing up to parody his show and using his martial arts on O'Brien.
  • Norris is a main character in a flash movie made by Neil Cicierega, called Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
  • Norris is the object of an Internet parody known as Chuck Norris "Facts" documenting and proclaiming fictional feats and characteristics. Norris has written his own response to the parody on his website, stating that he doesn't feel offended by them, and finds some of them funny.

Trivia

Filmography

Movie poster of Invasion USA, starring Chuck Norris

Notes

  1. "At Dinner with: Chuck Norris", The New York Times, May 12, 1993
  2. "Chuck Norris — Strong, Silent, Popular", The New York Times, September 1, 1985
  3. "At Dinner with: Chuck Norris", The New York Times, May 12, 1993
  4. Ibid.
  5. "Chuck Norris — Strong, Silent, Popular", The New York Times, September 1, 1985

External links

Categories: