The karate master who became an action star

Chuck Norris knew exactly what his audience wanted. A six-time world karate champion, he also had black belts in tae kwon do, tang soo do, Brazilian jujitsu, and judo, and when he pivoted to films he chose warrior
roles. Showing up to save the day in movie after movie, he won millions
of fans, even if he never quite won over the critics. From the 1970s to 2000s, Norris was omnipresent in the action genre, starring in films like The Delta Force (1986) as well as three Missing in Action movies. From 1993 to 2001, he also starred on TV in the CBS hit Walker, Texas Ranger. At heart, every role he played was an American good guy, taking down the bad guys with necessary violence. His legions of fans loved it. “They want to believe in me,” he said, “just as I believed in John Wayne when I was a boy.”

Norris grew up poor in Oklahoma and Southern California, moving 13 times by age 15. He was “not notably athletic,” said The New York Times, and with his alcoholic father often absent, he turned to movie heroes like Wayne for lessons in manhood. After high school, he joined the Air Force in 1958 and discovered tae kwon do and tang soo do while stationed in South Korea. With his strength and agility compensating for his relatively slight frame, he soon earned black belts in many martial arts. In karate, he was an undisputed master, reigning as world middleweight champion
from 1968 to 1974. Still, the karate schools he owned in California went
under, and Steve McQueen, who’d been one of his students, told him,
“If you can’t do anything else, there’s always acting.” Another friend, Bruce Lee, got him his first big role, in The Way of the Dragon (1972). Unlike other action stars, he possessed “an air of humility, even serenity,” said The Guardian, and preferred roles that cast him as a defender, not an aggressor.

In later years, he was known “for his support of conservative causes such as gun rights,” said The Washington Post, supporting President Trump
in 2016 and becoming the face of Glock in 2019. In the mid-aughts he became “a cultural phenomenon,” when the Chuck Norris Facts meme took over the internet with gems like “Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.” Norris found it amusing. He said he didn’t mind being seen as just an action hero. “I never dreamed of being an ac-tor,” he said. “I do what I do.”