Chuck Norris is best known for his martial arts moves and consistent appearance on our television screens.
Have you ever wondered where he learned his martial arts skills or how heschool became so famous?
Here are 100 Chuck Norris facts that will answer some of the mysteries of this crazy character.
Chuck Norris’s full name is Carlos Ray Norris. He is 84 years old and was born on March 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma, US.
Norris’ father, Ray Dee Norris, was a World War II soldier and a man of many talents. Sadly he was also an alcoholic.
Norris was named after his father’s minister, Carlos Berry.
Norris has two younger brothers, Wieland and Aaron. Aaron is a Hollywood producer.
He was an introvert at school; Norris was not athletic and was academically mediocre.
Norris has shared that his parent’s unstable finances and the embarrassment of his father’s alcoholism are the main reasons for his introverted character as a child.
His parents divorced when Norris was 16, which resulted in him moving with his mother and brothers to Torrance in California.
Norris is best known for his acting, but he is a man of many talents. He is a martial artist, film producer, screenwriter, and he was an air policeman for the US Air Force.
Norris married his high school sweetheart Dianne Kay Holechek. He was age 18, and she was 17 years old.
In 1958 Norris became an Air Policeman for the United States Air Force. He was posted to Osan Air Base in South Korea.
It was at this airbase that he acquired the nickname Chuck.
While training in Osan, Norris began to learn the martial art of Tang Soo Do.
He was discharged from the US Air Force in August 1962.
Norris moved back to Torrance, California, where he applied to be a police officer.
While on the waiting list for the police force, in 1962, Norris opened his first martial arts studio.
To help promote his martial arts studio, Norris attended martial arts events and even did demonstrations and fights.
Norris created his own form of martial art called Chun Kuk Do, which means Universal Way.
Norris created the ten rules known as the code of honor for his martial art of Chun Kuk Do.
The Chun Kuk Do world championship tournament is held every summer in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Norris and Holechek had their first child, Mike, in 1962 and their second, Eric, in 1964. In 1963 Norris’ daughter from an affair was born.
It wasn’t until 1967 that Norris started to win martial arts tournaments.
At the Tournament of Karate on June 3, 1967, Norris defeated seven opponents. His last fight was with Skipper Mullins, and Norris won the tournament.
In 1967 Norris also won the Sparring Grand Champions at the S. Henry Cho’s All American Championship.
He went on to win the title at the Sparring Grand Champions in 1968.
In 1968, Norris won the Professional Middleweight Karate champion title and kept the title for six consecutive years.
In 1969, Black Belt magazine awarded Norris the Fighter of the Year award.
In the same year, he was awarded Karate’s Triple Crown for having the most tournament wins in the year.
1972 saw Norris appear alongside Bruce Lee as his nemesis in Way of the Dragon, known as Return of the Dragon in the US.
In 1975 Norris published his first book titled Winning Tournament Karate.
In 1982 Norris won the Action Star of the Year award at the ShoWest Convention.
The first video game based on Norris was released in 1983. It was called Chuck Norris Superkicks.
His acting career really started to take off when Cannon Films signed Norris into a multiple film deal. The first film was Missing in Action, which was released in 1984.
Another of Norris’ famous acting features was in The Delta Force, which premiered on February 14, 1986.
Norris became Cannon’s leading star during the 1980s.
Norris voiced a cartoon version of himself in six episodes of the cartoon Karate Kommandos. Marvel later published a comic book based on this story.
1987 saw the release of Norris’ book The Secret of Inner Strength: My Story. In the book, Norris talks about his acting career and training with Bruce Lee.
Norris and his wife separated when Norris was filming The Delta Force 2 in 1988.
Sadly in 1989, after 30 years of marriage, Holechek and Norris divorced.
1989 was the year that Norris received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
TNT Games designed the video game Missing in Action in 1989, based on the film with the same name. Unfortunately, it was not released as it was designed for the slowly dying market for the Atari 7800.
By 1990, Norris’ films had all together grossed over $500 million worldwide.
In 1992 with support from President George Bush, Norris set up his own charitable organization called Kickstart.
Kickstart provided martial arts lessons to middle school children to help them develop a better understanding of respect and discipline.
At the ShoWest Convention 1992, Norris won the International Box Office Star of the Year award.
From 1993 to 2001, Norris starred as Walker in the television series Walker, Texas Ranger.
Alongside his brother Aaron, Norris bought a ranch in Texas, where he lived during the filming of Walker, Texas Ranger. The ranch had a separate building that was used as a studio.
In 1996 Norris played the role of a mythical spirit in the environmental film Forest Warrior.
At the 1997 Lone Star Film & Television Awards, Norris won the Special Award of being a Texas legend.
For two consecutive years, 1997 and 1998, at the BMI Awards, Norris was given the BMI TV Music Award.
In 1998 Norris remarried his new wife, Gena O’Kelley.
In 1999, Norris’s contribution to the Martial Arts world was recognized when he was added to the Martial Arts History Museum’s Hall of Fame.
At the 1999 TV Guide Award, Norris was nominated for the Favorite Actor in a Drama award.
To finish the successful year of 1999, at the Grace Prize Award, Norris won the Inspirational Acting in Television Award.
On July 1, 2000, the World Karate Union Hall of Fame presented Norris with the Golden Lifetime Achievement Award.
On August 30, 2001, Norris’s wife, O’Kelley, delivered twins, making Norris a father to five children.
In 2001 at the American Veteran Awards, Norris received the Veteran of the Year award.
At the Golden Boot Awards in 2001, Norris won the Golden Boot!
It wasn’t until 2004 when Norris explained in an interview that he met his illegitimate daughter for the first time when she was 26 years old.
Norris founded the World Combat League in 2005. It was a team-based martial arts competition where half of the proceeds were donated to his charity Kickstart.
Chuck Norris Facts started to appear on the internet from around 2005. The memes were satirical factoids about Norris and have become a major part of popular culture.
Norris claimed his favorite Chuck Norris Fact was “They wanted to add his face to Mount Rushmore, but the granite is not hard enough for his beard.”
In 2006 he embarked on a journey to visit American troops based in Iraq.
He later produced a film called Answering the call, which documented and featured this trip to Iraq.
2006 was the year Norris published his first novel entitled The Justice Riders. The sequel A Threat to Justice was published a year later, in 2007.
On March 28, 2007, Norris became an honorary United States Marine by Commandant Gen. James T. Conway.
On November 29, 2007, Gotham Books published the book based on the internet memes called The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the World’s Greatest Human, written by Ian Spector.
In December 2007, Norris filed a lawsuit against Gotham Books due to the book exploiting privacy rights and trademark infringement.
Norris dropped the case in 2008, and since then, the author Ian Spector has published four more sequel books.
Another Norris-themed video game was released in 2008 with the title Chuck Norris: Bring on the Pain.
Chuck Norris: Bring On the Pain was created by Gameloft and was based on the growing online popularity Norris was generating from Chuck Norris Facts.
In 2008 Norris published his non-fiction book titled Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America.
In September 2008, that very book became number 14 on the New York Times bestseller list, his second book to be on the list.
On October 7, 2009, Norris published his book titled; The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book: 101 of Chuck’s Favorite Facts and Stories.
By 2009 Norris had published a total of nine books that he had either written himself or co-written.
At the 2010 ActionFest, Norris won the Lifetime Achievement Award.
On December 2, 2010, Texas Governor Rick Perry gave both Norris and his brother Aaron the title of honorary Texas Ranger.
Norris featured in the World of Warcraft video game advertisements in 2011.
In 2012 Norris co-starred alongside the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the sequel to The Expendables.
In 2013 Norris listed his ranch in Texas as being worth $1.2 million.
In 2015, an aquifer was found on his ranch in Texas, so he founded CForce Bottling Co.
He also broke into the French television market by appearing in two commercials for the television show “Pieds dans le plat.”
Norris starred in a commercial for the Belgian beer, Hoegaarden, in 2016.
In 2017 the mobile phone game called Non-Stop Chuck was created by Flaregames. This was the fourth video game produced about Chuck Norris.
Also in 2017, Norris became an ambassador for the car brand Fiat, advertising their commercial vehicles.
In 2018 he starred in three different advertisement campaigns; a campaign for Toyota, Finnish burger chain Hesburger, and a beer company called Cerveza Poker.
In 2019, Norris received some criticism after signing a gun endorsement deal with Glock. Some thought that it was inappropriate due to the increase in school shootings in the US at the time.
In January 2020, Norris starred in an advertisement for QuickTrip’s Snackle food line. In the commercial, Norris shoots hotdogs from a cannon into the crowd.
On April 3, 2020, Norris made a guest appearance in Hawaii Five-0’s series finale.
Norris has only ever lost ten fights in his life.
Norris has had the likes of Steve McQueen, Bob Barker, Priscilla Presley, Donny Osmond attended his martial arts schools.
On Norris’s website, there is a complete list of celebrities and famous martial artists who have attended his schools.
Norris is a 10th-degree black belt in Chun Kuk Do. He also holds the rank of 9th-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do and ranks 8th-degree black belt in Kyokushin Budokai.
Norris was officially the first-ever westerner to be given the 8th-degree black belt Grand Master in Taekwondo.
Norris is a 5th-degree black belt in Karate and a 3rd-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsum, and is a black belt in Judo.
Norris’s family roots stem from both Irish and Cherokee ancestry.
Norris is a proud Christian and is the author of multiple Christian-themed books.
He is a Republican.
Norris had his own line of pants called Action Jeans. Norris promoted them as pants that allow you to move without the risk of a crotch rip.
Norris supports charities in the US, but he is a proud donor to the Vijay Amritraj Foundation in India. This charity helps bring hope to those in unfortunate circumstances.
Norris is 5 foot 10 inches (1.78 meters) in height.
Chuck Norris is a man of many talents who has become one of the world’s most famous actors.
His contributions to the martial arts world have led him to become a legend and a founding member of the sport.
Norris’s energy and commitment to martial arts have inspired generations and are still being talked about today!
