Chuck Norris

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Chuck Norris (2015)

Chuck Norris (* 10. March 1940 in Ryan , Oklahoma ; actually Carlos Ray Norris Jr. ) is an American martial artist , action - actor and author.

He gained greater fame as a film opponent of Bruce Lee in Death Claw Strikes Again (1972) as well as through the three-part film series Missing in Action (1984–1988) and the television series Walker, Texas Ranger (1993–2001), as its executive producer he also acted. After not being seen in theaters since 2004, he made a comeback in 2012 in The Expendables 2 .

He is known as a conservative evangelical Christian and is committed to these positions and their representatives in the Republican Party in the USA. The Chuck Norris Facts have been in circulation as internet memes since 2005, which humorously allude to his martial film roles and his martial arts.

Life

Chuck Norris (1976)

Chuck Norris is the son of Ray and Wilma Norris, both parents are half Cherokee , half Irish descent. He is the oldest of three children. His brother Wieland was born in July 1943, brother Aaron followed in 1951. His father was an alcoholic and kept leaving the family for indefinite periods of time. In addition, the family moved several times, including a. to California and Arizona . The parents' marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1956. The mother remarried in August of the same year.

After graduating from high school, he joined the United States Air Force in 1958 . His goal was to pursue a career as a police officer. He received his training with the Air Force in Texas . On December 29, 1958, he married Dianne Holechek, with whom he had been in high school. In October 1963, their son Mike was born.

In 1960, Norris served in the Korean Military Police and was stationed at Osan Base. During the Korea time he turned to the martial arts for and coached the Korean martial art Tang Soo Do . He was nicknamed Chuck by his comrades .

Not until 1962 did he return to the USA after fourteen months of service. First he was stationed in California; after the end of four years of service, he resigned from the Air Force.

family

Chuck Norris has five children: The sons Mike (* 1963) and Eric (* 1965) come from his first marriage (1958–1988) with Dianne Holechek. The second marriage (since 1998) with Gena O'Kelley resulted in twins (* 2001), a son and a daughter. An illegitimate daughter, whom Norris found out about 26 years after she was born, was born in 1964.

Mike Norris is active as a stuntman, director, producer and actor. He made his acting debut in 1979 in the film The Bulldozer , in which his father played the lead role. In the 1980s and 1990s, roles in various B-action films followed. He later directed several episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger and started their own production company with his wife, specializing in religious films.

Son Eric works as a stuntman and stunt coordinator and was involved in several of his father's productions , beginning with Invasion USA (1985). He also directed several episodes of the Walker, Texas Ranger series .

His youngest brother, Aaron Norris, is also in the film industry. In June 1970, Norris' brother Wieland died in the Vietnam War . The following year, his father was killed in a traffic accident.

Engagement in martial arts

Chuck Norris is Tang Soo Do and Taekwondo master ( 8th Dan ). Norris was the first western man to be awarded the 8th Dan in Taekwondo. Initially, he taught Tang Soo Do alongside a job at an armaments company and, due to his success, decided to open his own martial arts school. Soon Norris and a partner were running three martial arts schools, and in 1970 they got the offer to run a whole chain of schools under their name, with a share of the revenues. They accepted the proposal.

In 1963, Norris played his first martial arts tournament in Salt Lake City . In the following years more tournaments followed, of which Norris could win more than 30. He kicked u. a. several times against Joe Lewis and also met Bruce Lee at a tournament in 1967 . In the meantime, he also engaged in other martial arts, such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu , which he learned from Carlos Machado . A martial arts technique that is now firmly associated with his name is the roundhouse kick .

It was Bruce Lee who helped Norris make his first small film appearance in 1968. As the choreographer for the fights in the 1968 film Rollkommando , he hired Norris for a small role as a bodyguard.

In 1968 he won the first World Professional Karate Championship , which, however, was not organized by an official association. In 1967 he was middleweight world champion in karate for the first time. In the same year he was named Fighter of the Year by Black Belt magazine . Norris never took part in the official World Championships of the World Union of Karate Do Organizations , which have been held since 1970 . There is no verified information as to whether Norris ever took part in full contact fighting. In 1972 and 1973 he won his last athletic title at the World Professional Karate Championships . During this time he came into contact with various prominent students whom he taught as a martial arts teacher. The prelude was Dan Blocker , who hired him to teach his son. It followed u. a. Michael Landon and Steve McQueen , with whom a friendship developed. In 1973, Norris worked with some of his students in the Roger Corman production The Student Teacher . Jonathan Kaplan directed the film . In 1974 Norris ended his career in martial arts.

Meanwhile, the chain of martial arts schools run on behalf of Norris had become a subject of speculation and bankruptcy threatened. Norris bought back seven branches and had to go into debt for them. For this reason, he took on a leading role as the villain in 1973 in the movie The Boss of San Francisco , which only came to US theaters in 1981.

Acting career

With The Death Claw Strikes Again , Norris took on his second role in a film in 1972, again on the initiative of Bruce Lee, who both directed and was responsible for the script and production of this project. The film wasn't shown in the United States until 1974, and Norris was initially not interested in pursuing an acting career.

It was Steve McQueen who persuaded Norris to pursue an acting career and take acting classes. In 1977 he was offered the lead role in the low-budget film Breaker Breaker for around $ 10,000 , and Norris accepted. The following year saw Black Tiger , in which Ted Post took over the direction. His brother Aaron was also involved in this for the first time, who doubled him in a few scenes. This collaboration intensified over the years, and later Aaron directed seven films with Chuck Norris in the lead role.

Black Tiger and the following films The Bulldozer (1979) and Octagon (1980) grossed around 100 million US dollars in the United States. After two more films, Norris was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Kalte Wut (1982) and immediately committed to two other productions, which, however, were not realized by mutual request. Therefore, the follow-up project McQuade, the Wolf (1983) was realized with the help of private investors and the production company Topkick Productions founded by Chuck Norris and his brother.

For the film production company Cannon Films , led by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus , Norris subsequently shot the war films Missing in Action (1984) and Missing in Action 2 - The Return (1985). Because of their box office success, Norris was offered an exclusive contract with Cannon Films that made him $ 1 million and promised the same amount for each film. With the exception of Cusack - Der Schweigsame , which was made in 1985 and, in contrast to the other films, was received positively by critics, the following films were all made for Cannon Films.

In 1993, Norris turned to television with the lead role in Walker, Texas Ranger ; the series aired until 2001. Also in 1993 was Wind in the Wire, an hour-long television production in which Norris appeared in a small appearance alongside Lou Diamond Phillips and Burt Reynolds .

The film Hellbound , shot in 1992 , was only released on the video market in 1995. The 1995 film Top Dog meant Norris' last leading role in a cinema. This was followed by Forest Warrior , which had its premiere on the video market. The productions of the following years - with the exception of the direct-to-DVD production Bells of Innocence , in which Norris plays an angel in a smaller role - are television films.

Chuck Norris (2000)

In Dodgeball in 2004 graduated from Norris a cameo appearance on the big screen. The leading roles in the television productions The Cutter and Walker, Texas Ranger: Baptism of Fire , both of which were created in 2005, were his last appearances as an actor for seven years. He didn't return until 2012 with a guest appearance in the action film The Expendables 2 . Norris also played himself in a television commercial for the online role-playing game World of Warcraft , which was shown on German television for a few weeks in 2011. In 2012 he worked on the advertising of the Polish bank BZ WBK and was featured as a Texas Ranger.

Film rolls

During his time as an actor, Norris was mainly subscribed to the portrayal of silent loners, some of whom displayed a very patriotic-reactionary sentiment and fought out their struggles against American enemy images. For example, in Invasion USA (1985) he fought against invaders from the then Eastern Bloc , in Delta Force (1986) against Arab terrorists and in Missing in Action (1984) against the Viet Cong . His second parade role was that of the law enforcement officer, who resorted to methods that were not always legal to fulfill his task; as such he was seen in McQuade, the Wolf (1982) and Cusack, the Silent (1985). In 2020 he played in the series finale of Hawaii Five-0 .

Filmography

German dubbing voices

Over the years, Norris has been dubbed by several speakers for the German versions of his films . The most common voice in recent years has been Jürgen Kluckert Norris' German voice, e.g. B. Delta Force and the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger .

Public role

Chuck Norris owns the evangelical influenced Christian right in the United States. He is a supporter of creationism and considers the theory of evolution to be wrong. Norris is a staunch supporter of the Republican Party and created an election commercial with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in 2008, alluding to the Chuck Norris Facts . In 2012, he and his wife Gena warned in a campaign video against the re-election of Barack Obama , which they believe would lead to the US in decline. They warned that 30 million evangelical Christians did not vote in 2008, making Obama's election victory possible.

Norris published an autobiography called The Secret of Inner Strength and founded the charity Kickstart to combat violence and drug trafficking in schools. In December 2010 he was made an honorary member of the Texas Rangers elite unit in Texas - he played, among other things, the leading role in the series Walker, Texas Ranger - and received the official Texas Ranger star.

In 2017, the development studio flaregames released the game Nonstop Chuck Norris , which he had approved and which is based on the previous title Nonstop Knight . During the course of the game, which is largely automatic, Chuck Norris facts are interspersed again and again, and both the design of the FSK 12 game and its content are strongly based on the role in which Norris is publicly perceived. He is portrayed as a modern cowboy with superhuman abilities.

Trivia

Due to his stereotypical roles as an invincible, law-abiding action hero, the Chuck Norris Facts (Chuck Norris facts) enjoy great popularity; Short jokes that parody his superiority. Example: “Chuck Norris doesn't eat honey. He chews bees. ”In August 2017 there was a real incident that made the cult jokes about Norris even more astonishing: The actor survived two heart attacks in one day.

Under five facts about Chuck Norris, the Süddeutsche also listed a documented failure of the “toughest senior in the world”: Though thousands of Slovak fans had pleaded for the name of the Bicycle Bridge of Freedom after him in 2012 , this did not materialize. A few years earlier, the attempt to name a bridge in Hungary after him, the Megyeri Bridge , had failed .

Works

  • Chuck Norris: Winning Tournament Karate . Valencia 1975, ISBN 0-89750-016-4 .
  • Chuck Norris: Toughen Up! the Chuck Norris Fitness System . New York 1983, ISBN 0-553-01465-X .
  • Chuck Norris, Joe Hyams: The Secret of Inner Strength . Boston 1987.
  • Chuck Norris: The Secret Power Within . Boston 1996, ISBN 0-553-06908-X .
  • Chuck Norris: Against All Odds: My Story . Nashville 2004, ISBN 0-8054-3161-6 .
  • Chuck Norris: Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America . Washington 2008, ISBN 1-59698-558-5 .

literature

  • Byron Coley: Chuck Norris . New York 1986, ISBN 0-312-90098-8 .
  • Suzanne Weyn, Ellen Steiber: From Chuck Norris to the Karate Kid: Martial Arts in the Movies . New York 1986, ISBN 0-938753-00-2 .
  • Melanie Cole: Chuck Norris (Real-Life Reader Biography) . Hockessin 1998, ISBN 1-883845-91-2 .
  • Günter Sippert: Chuck Norris and his films . Kaufbeuren 2000, ISBN 3-928871-02-1 .
  • Dave Smeds: Chuck Norris (Martial Arts Masters) . New York 2001, ISBN 0-8239-3516-7 .
  • Correna F. Wilson Pickens, Farah Bazzrea: Sheltered in His Arms - A Mother's Faith in God Sustained Chuck, Wieland, and Aaron Norris: Wilma Norris Knight . Wilson 2008, ISBN 0-9818611-0-5 .
  • Al Hemingway: Chuck Norris (Overcoming Adversity: Sharing the American Dream) . Broomall 2009, ISBN 1-4222-0591-6 .
  • Tobias Hohmann: Chuck Norris. Action stars. Volume 3. MPW, Hille 2013, ISBN 978-3-942621-20-5 .

Web links

Commons : Chuck Norris  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, Hille 2013, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 11ff.
  3. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 15.
  4. ↑ a b Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 19f.
  5. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 15f.
  6. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 17ff.
  7. ↑ Biography and Profile of Chuck Norris. In: about.com , accessed March 12, 2012
  8. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 292
  9. ^ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 313
  10. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 29f.
  11. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 30.
  12. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 21f.
  13. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 25ff.
  14. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 22.
  15. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 46f.
  16. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 56.
  17. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, pp. 47–51.
  18. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 33f.
  19. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 61ff.
  20. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 64.
  21. ^ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 101.
  22. ^ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 122.
  23. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 133f.
  24. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 135.
  25. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 148.
  26. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 179.
  27. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 297.
  28. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 297.
  29. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 303.
  30. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 304.
  31. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 315f.
  32. ↑ Tobias Hohmann: Norris, p. 327
  33. ↑ Chuck Norris. In: synchronkartei.de , accessed on September 14, 2010.
  34. ^ Nicolai Kwasniewski: A thousand years of darkness. In: Spiegel Online , September 2, 2012.
  35. ↑ Chuck Norris almost died , Focus Online, August 24, 2017
  36. ↑ David Steinitz: Five facts about Chuck Norris: The toughest senior in the world turns 75. sueddeutsche.de, March 9, 2015
  37. ^ Chuck Norris leads the way in Budapest bridge-naming vote. In: The Sydney Morning Herald , August 2, 2006, accessed November 13, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Norris, Chuck
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carlos Ray Norris Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor and karate world champion
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Ryan , Oklahoma , USA