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Chuck Norris Filmography
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Chuck Norris: Biography
A native of Ryan, Oklahoma, Norris has two younger brothers, one of which is Hollywood producer Aaron Norris. Norris is one 1/4 Cherokee (from his father) and part British and Irish (from his mother).
When Norris was 12, his parents divorced and he relocated to California with his mother and brothers. There, he finished high school and soon married his girlfriend, Diane Holechek. After marriage, Norris joined the United States Air Force and was sent to South Korea. It was in South Korea that Norris acquired the nickname
Chuck. He later joined the United States Marine Corps. He has portrayed an Army Major in Delta Force, Army Colonel in Missing in Action, and a Marine Captain during flashback scenes in his T.V. hit series Walker, Texas Ranger.
Norris has indicated in his own biography that he has black belts in Tang Soo Do, Tae Kwon Do, and is founder of Chun Kuk Do ("Universal Way").Mr. Norris has also practiced Judo, Shito-Ryu Karate, and Brazilian jujutsu. He is also founder of The United Fighting Arts Federation (UFAF).
Norris returned to the United States in 1962, working for the Northrop corporation and opening a karate school, which many celebrities, including fellow Marine
Steve McQueen attended. In 1963, his son Mike was born. A daughter, Dina followed in 1964, and a second son, Eric, in 1965. But another important moment happened in 1964: at a demonstration in Long Beach, Norris met
Bruce Lee. Impressed with Norris' ability, Lee began to persuade Norris to try an acting career.
In 1968, Norris was Karate's world Middleweight champion, and 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 1968 that Norris made his acting debut, in the
Dean Martin movie The Wrecking Crew. The greatest tragedy of Norris's life took place in 1970. His younger brother Weyend was killed in Vietnam. Norris later dedicated his Missing In Action films to his brother's memory. In 1972, he acted alongside Lee in the movie Way of the Dragon, and in 1974, McQueen encouraged him to begin acting classes at the MGM Studio.
While at acting classes his voice and drama coach was Jonathan Harris, of Lost In Space fame. Harris taught Norris how to speak by putting his fingers in Norris's mouth, and stretching his mouth wide open. He describes Harris as the only man in the world who could get away with doing that to him.
Norris' first starring role was 1977's Breaker, Breaker!
, and subsequent films such as The Octagon
, An Eye for an Eye
, 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.
In 1988, after 30 years of marriage, Norris and Holechek divorced.
In 1990, Norris founded the non-profit organization
Kick Drugs Out of America. It has since been renamed KICKSTART.
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.
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.
United States President George W. Bush has stated that Norris is his favorite actor.
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Filmography >>
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Latest Film News
Latest news on Chuck Norris
IssuesEchoing right-wing smears, ABC's The Note falsely suggested a link between Obama and Colombian rebels
The July 3 edition of The Note,
ABCNews.com's daily political newsletter, quoted Chicago Tribune reporter Frank James
writing of Sen. John McCain's recent trip to Colombia: "If
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe were going to help one of the presidential
candidates, it would likely be McCain more than Sen. Barack Obama since the
all-but-official Republican presidential nominee supports the U.S.-Colombia
Free Trade Agreement while Sen. Barack Obama doesn't." Immediately after
quoting James, ABC added: "(And the RNC may want you to remember that it
was Obama's name -- not McCain's -- that popped up on a seized FARC laptop.)"
ABC offered no explanation for its reference -- in a compilation of reports about the release of the Colombian hostages and McCain's trip to Colombia -- to a report that
Obama's name "popped up" in a computer seized from
"FARC," the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Indeed, the Associated Press article ABC linked to simply reports that a letter
written by FARC's spokesman said that unnamed "gringos"
working with Ecuador's government "say the new president will be
(Barack Obama)" and that Obama "rejects both the Bush
administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current
military aid program." As Media
Matters for America has noted, neither the AP article nor the
reported letter itself indicates any relationship between Obama and FARC.
Several right-wing groups and media
outlets have used the letter to falsely allege "contacts" and other connections between FARC and
Obama. A March 7 Investor's Business
daily editorial claimed that
"FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama's campaign," and that
the letter "signals a disturbing pattern of contacts with rogue
actors." A March 6 entry on Corruption
Chronicles, "A Judicial Watch
Blog," falsely claimed an "electronic mail[]"from FARC said that
"associates of FARC were scheduling a sit down with" Sen. Barack
Obama "to lobby him." Radio host Rush Limbaugh later read the Corruption
Chronicles entry aloud on the March 12 broadcast of his nationally syndicated
radio program.
The text of the purported letter,
reprinted by El País (Spain),
does not identify the "gringos" to whom the FARC spokesman, the
reported author of the letter, referred. Translated to English, the relevant
portion of the letter reads:
The
gringos will ask for an appointment with the minister to request that he
communicate to us his interest in discussing these topics. They say that the
new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in
your compatriots. Obama will not support Plan Colombia nor sign the TLC. We
responded that we are interested in relations with all governments on equal
terms, and that in the case of the United States this requires a
public pronouncement expressing their interest in talking with FARC, given
their continual war with us.
From the July 3 edition of The Note:
"McCain
spends 24 hours on Colombia
soil, hostages are rescued. (It sounds almost like a Chuck Norris Interweb fact
...)" per ABC's Karen Travers and Gregory
Wallace.
One
theory: "If Colombia's
President Alvaro Uribe were going to help one of the presidential candidates, it
would likely be McCain more than Sen, Barack Obama since the all-but-official
Republican presidential nominee supports the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
while Sen. Barack Obama doesn't," Frank James writes for the Chicago
Tribune.
(And
the RNC may want you to remember that it was Obama's name -- not McCain's --
that popped up on a seized FARC laptop.)
Published: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:26:53 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the article
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