Norris starred in more than two dozen films portraying silent loners, soldiers, lawmen, veterans, All-American heroes<\/p>\n
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, his family said in a statement on his Instagram account on Friday.<\/p>\n
“While we would like to \u200bkeep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace,” the statement read.<\/p>\n
The six-time undefeated World Professional Middleweight \u200cKarate Champion, whose tough-guy image inspired satirical “facts” that made him an Internet phenomenon, had been hospitalised in Hawaii on Thursday, Variety<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n With his roundhouse kicks, he fought martial arts icon Bruce Lee in Rome’s Colosseum in his 1973 film debut “The Way of \u200bthe Dragon”. Along with actor Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, he helped defeat villain Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 2012 blockbuster “The Expendables 2”.<\/p>\n Time <\/em>magazine described \u200bhim as “the ultimate tough guy”.<\/p>\n “In his strictly wham-bam B-movie genre, Norris, a former karate champion, has become the undisputed superstar,” it said in \u20601985.<\/p>\n Norris dodged bullets, landed kicks squarely on an opponent’s jaw and dismissed multiple villains at a time in his action-packed films.<\/p>\n His macho image made him a hit at the \u200bbox 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”.<\/p>\n The bearded actor, writer \u200band 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.<\/p>\n 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”.<\/p>\n An unlikely tough guy<\/strong><\/p>\n Carlos Ray Norris was born \u200bon March 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma, the oldest of three brothers. The family moved to California after his parents divorced.<\/p>\n He was extremely quiet and introverted, which he attributed \u200bto his father’s alcoholism and the family’s poverty.<\/p>\n “In school, I was shy and inhibited,” Norris wrote in his 2004 memoir “Against All Odds: My Story”.<\/p>\n “If the teacher asked me to recite something aloud in front \u200cof the \u2060class, I would just shake my head no.”<\/p>\n Norris was also not a natural athlete. He had to train remarkably hard to become a martial arts champion, he said. After graduating from school, he enlisted in the US\u00a0Air Force in 1958. While stationed in South Korea, he learned Tang Soo Do, a form of karate, and other martial arts.<\/p>\n The future film star started teaching martial arts in California after his discharge. He also won major competitions. Actor Steve McQueen, who was one of Norris’ students, encouraged him to try acting.<\/p>\n “He told me \u200bthat I should think about projecting a presence, \u200band never do a part that \u2060had a lot of dialogue,” Norris told the New York Times<\/em> in a 1985 interview.<\/p>\n “He told me, ‘Movies are visual, and when you try to verbalise something, you’re going to lose the audience.'”<\/p>\n Norris’ films grossed millions and made him a popular figure among the US\u00a0military. He \u200bvisited Iraq in 2006 and 2007 to show his support for American troops.<\/p>\n In 1990, he founded his own martial arts discipline, Chun \u200bKuk Do, and established \u2060the nonprofit organisation, Kickstart Kids, to teach children martial arts and self-esteem.<\/p>\n A patriot, conservative, and devout Christian, he worked with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was a contributor to WorldNetDaily<\/em>, a far-right news and aggregator website.<\/p>\n In addition to his best-selling memoir, Norris published “The Secret of Inner Strength – My Story”, his guide to self-improvement, as well as several books on fitness and martial arts and \u2060two novels:\u00a02006’s “The \u200bJustice Riders” and its sequel, “A Threat to Justice”.<\/p>\n He was married twice and had five children.<\/p>\n Norris defended his films \u200bto critics who claimed they promoted violence. If they are well written, he said, action films can tell a story as effectively as any drama or romance.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s how it\u2019s done. I don\u2019t advocate violence for violence\u2019s sake,” \u200bhe told the Los Angeles Times<\/em> in 1994. “What people hang on to is that the good guy wins in the end.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Norris starred in more than two dozen films portraying silent loners, soldiers, lawmen, veterans, All-American heroes 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.tribune.com.pk\/media\/images\/kkkk-2026-03-20t194822-2731774018110-0\/kkkk-2026-03-20t194822-2731774018110-0-640x480.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}