When God said, “Let there be light!” Chuck Norris said, “Say Please.” That, of course, is just one of the many “CHUCK NORRIS FACTS” that have taken the internet by storm since the mid-2000s. The Chuck Norris Facts phenomena helped make Norris a cult icon, but before those ever were a thing, the bearded one was already a legend to anyone who grew up in the eighties and nineties.
In our latest WTF Happened to this Celebrity, we take a look at Norris’s legendary career, from his early days sparring with Bruce Lee in Rome on Way of the Dragon to his eighties classics like Lone Wolf McQuade, his wild run with Cannon Films, which included classics like Missing in Action, The Delta Force and Invasion USA, to eventual TV superstardom on Walker Texas Ranger.
Norris was right up there with the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger for children of the eighties. Sure, his movies were never quite as polished, but they were good fun. Some of them, such as the first Missing in Action or the insanely underrated Code of Silence, are way better than people remember, and for a while, Norris’s career was red-hot. In the nineties, his big-screen career cooled, but he made a seamless transition to TV. At its peak, Walker Texas Ranger was so popular they even let him sing the theme song!
Since cameoing in The Expendables 2, Norris has been pretty low-key in front of the camera, but it turned out the bearded one had plenty of good reasons. Now in his early eighties, Norris seems happily semi-retired but is still only one round-house kick away from a comeback, as we go into in WTF HAPPENED TO CHUCK NORRIS!
What’s your favorite Chuck Norris flick? Let us know in the talkbacks!