Chuck Norris, the former martial arts champion and 1980s action-film hero who fought the bad guys in “Code of Silence,” “Missing in Action” and “The Delta Force” and upheld the law in the TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” died on Thursday, March 19, his family said in a statement on his Instagram account on Friday, March 20.
“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that his family surrounded him and was at peace,” the statement read.
The six-time undefeated World Professional Middleweight Karate Champion, whose tough-guy image inspired satirical “facts” that made him an Internet phenomenon, had been hospitalised in Hawaii on Thursday, Variety reported.
Norris starred in more than two dozen films portraying silent loners, soldiers, lawmen, veterans and All-American heroes who captured criminals, released prisoners of war, rescued hostages and battled terrorists.
With his roundhouse kicks, he fought martial arts icon Bruce Lee in Rome’s Colosseum in his 1973 film debut “The Way of the Dragon.” Along with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis, he helped defeat the villain Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 2012 blockbuster “The Expendables 2.”
Time magazine described him as “the ultimate tough guy.”
“In his strictly wham-bam B-movie genre, Norris, a former karate champion, has become the undisputed superstar,” it said in 1985.
Norris dodged bullets, landed kicks squarely on an opponent’s jaw and dismissed multiple villains at a time in his action-packed films.
His macho image made him a hit at the box office and on the small screen. From 1993 to 2001, he played Sergeant Cordell Walker, an upstanding lawman, former Marine and martial arts expert in “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
The bearded actor, writer and producer became an online cult hero in 2005 when an American student created what became Chuck Norris Facts, online jokes about the actor’s physical prowess and masculinity that became a viral sensation and inspired several books.
Among the most popular were “Chuck Norris has a mug of nails instead of coffee in the morning” and “Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups; he pushes the Earth down.”
Carlos Ray Norris was born on March 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma, the oldest of three brothers.
