Martial arts star Chuck Norris dies at 86

Martial arts star Chuck Norris, who fought his way to fame in such 1980s action movies as The Delta Force, Code of Silence, and a trilogy of Missing in Action films, has died. He was 86.

In a fight, Norris tended to lead with his right…foot.

He all but trademarked a roundhouse kick that villains never seemed to see coming. He'd plant a heel in someone's gut, spin once to knock him off balance with a boot to the chest, spin again to catch the guy's shoulder with his instep, maybe throw in a punch just to vary the rhythm, and finish him off with a high kick to the head.

It was art, and widely imitated, but it did not kick off his career at first. He was knocking around martial arts competitions and teaching celebrity clients in Hollywood, including Priscilla Presley, Bob Barker, and Donny and Marie Osmond, when his pal Bruce Lee gave him his break in films by inviting him to play one of many villains in 1972's The Way of the Dragon.

The film fetishized Norris' hairy chest opposite Lee's smooth one, and he gave a little smirk when he flattened Lee with a roundhouse kick early on. But it was Lee's film, and by scene's end, Norris was toast.

That could've been it, if one of Norris' celebrity students, Steve McQueen, hadn't suggested he take acting lessons. Norris did, and scored the leading role of a put-upon trucker in Breaker! Breaker!, an action flick shot in just 11 days.

It made money, and in a string of indie hits that followed, Norris established himself as America's first homegrown martial arts movie star. At which point, Hollywood studios came calling with bigger budgets, and titles like Forced Vengeance, Silent Rage, Lone Wolf McQuade, and Invasion U.S.A. In that one, Norris played a mercenary combatting a Soviet-led terrorist army that lands in Florida at Christmastime, taunting foes with lines like, "If you come back in here, I'm gonna hit you with so many rights, you're gonna beg for a left."

He karate chopped and kickboxed his way through more than a dozen action films in the '80s before leaping to TV, where he played Sergeant Cordell Walker, a decorated Vietnam veteran with Cherokee ancestry who championed the "Code of the Old West" in about 200 episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Though a mostly non-verbal tough guy was his go-to role on screen, offscreen he established philanthropies for children and veterans, became a nationally-syndicated health and fitness columnist, got active in Republican politics, and wrote about 10 books including not just martial arts manuals, but two memoirs, two novels, and a conservative activist handbook called Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America.

At his home in Texas, he continued to work out and train well into his 80s. And though mostly retired in recent years, he was amused to find himself the subject of internet memes, "Chuck Norris Facts" that celebrated his supposed toughness with hyperbole and exaggeration.

"Did you know that I got bit by a king cobra?" he asks in one video, adding with a chuckle, "and after five days of agonizing pain, the cobra died."

Digital edited by Jennifer Vanasco; audio edited by Matteen Mokalla.
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