From a Blue Baby Abandoned by an Alcoholic Father to the Unbreakable Legend Who Conquered the World: The Heart-Wrenching True Story of How a Shy, Poor Kid From Oklahoma Became Chuck Norris
Before He Was Chuck Norris, He Was Just a Poor Kid From Oklahoma With an Absent Father
Chuck Norris didn’t have an easy start to life.
Chuck Norris once said that his autobiography begins with a single line that sums up everything: “Nothing ever came easy for me, not even being born.”
He wasn’t exaggerating.
Norris was born in Ryan, Oklahoma — a blue baby, as he described it — to an alcoholic father who was largely absent from his sons’ lives. His mother raised Chuck (whose name was “Carlos” at the time) and his two younger brothers on her own, eventually relocating the family to Torrance, California, where Norris attended North Torrance High School. He was, by his own description in a 1988 interview with the Los Angeles Times, “slightly built, non-athletic and shy to the point of being neurotic.” He dreamed of becoming a policeman but graduated too young to join the force.
Chuck Norris’ Time in the Air Force Led to His Foray Into Martial Arts
So he joined the Air Force instead as an Air Policeman during the Cold War.
Stationed in South Korea, Norris chose to study martial arts rather than, as he put it, “hang around the barracks and play cards, booze it up, or enroll in an academic class.” Within six months, something began to shift. “Many of the psychological insecurities started to subside,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I was becoming more communicative and assertive, and I had a better self-image.” After a year of daily practice he earned his black belt. “For the first time in my life, I had accomplished something difficult on my own.”
He returned to the United States and spent the late 1960s and early 1970s teaching karate, competing, and opening schools. Among his students were Steve McQueen, Bob Barker, and Priscilla Presley. He won nearly every major title available, including the world professional middleweight championship, before officially retiring from competition in
Steve McQueen Suggested Chuck Norris Start Acting
Financial problems threatened to close his schools, and McQueen, the student who learned karate from him, suggested Norris try acting. Norris laughed it off.
“When a door shuts in your life, that doesn’t mean that a bigger door isn’t going to open. If I hadn’t lost my schools, I’d still be there teaching karate. But because I lost those schools I was forced to seek another avenue. And acting is a bigger door than karate.”
He was in his mid-30s when he made his first film, and it took years before anyone took him seriously. But then came Lone Wolf McQuade in 1982, Missing in Action in 1984, and eventually Walker, Texas Ranger — the role that made him one of the most recognizable faces on American television for nearly a decade.
“Everything in my life has been tough,” he said in that same interview. “Nothing I’ve done has come easy. Whether it’s been in the karate world, the movie world, or my marriage.”
