Action movie star and martial arts champion Chuck Norris died on Thursday, March 19, 2026. He passed suddenly in Hawaii following hospitalization, according to a statement from his family. He was 86 years old.

Norris was a king of action movies, playing the toughest guys who can take on armies of criminals and come out unscathed. He was also a world champion martial artist and renowned karate instructor.

He was born on March 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma, and spent about half of his childhood living in California. After graduating from high school, he joined the US Air Force and was stationed at the Osan Air Base in South Korea during the 1950s. While there, he started learning martial arts, and after leaving the military in 1962, he became a karate instructor in the US.

Throughout the ‘60s, Norris opened over 30 karate studios and won many martial arts tournaments. In ’68, he became the World Middleweight Karate Championship and defended the title five times before retiring from competition in ’74. Over 20 years later in ’97, he became the first man in the Western Hemisphere to earn an 8th degree Black Belt Grand Master title.

His first onscreen role was in The Wrecking Crew in 1968, but it was his appearance in The Way of the Dragon – particularly a fight scene with Bruce Lee – that gained him fame. In ’77, Norris had his first starring role in Breaker! Breaker!, followed soon by Good Guys Wear Black, and A Force of One.

He was in An Eye for an Eye, Forced Vengeance, and he played a former Vietnam prisoner of war in Missing in Action and its sequels. In the mid-1980s, Norris played a heroic cop in Code of Silence, which was one of his best received roles, and a year later, he portrayed a tough soldier in The Delta Force. He was in Firewalker, Hero and the Terror, and he played himself in Sidekicks.

Switching to the small screen in the early ‘90s, Norris starred in Walker, Texas Ranger, as honorable, modern cowboy Cordell Walker who worked for the state level investigative bureau. The popular action/drama ran for eight seasons from 1993 to 2001.

During the show, he was also in Hellbound, Top Dog, and The President’s Man TV movies. After that, Norris was in Walker, Texas Ranger TV movies, played himself in Dodgeball, and did a cameo in The Expendables 2 with fellow ‘80s action stars like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. His most recent roles included an appearance on Hawaii Five-0, Agent Recon, and his final role was in Agent Recon in 2024.

Throughout his career, Norris has done philanthropic work for organizations like Make-A-Wish Foundation and the United Way, and he started Kickstart, a charitable group that provides martial arts training to middle school children. He has also been politically active, backing Republican candidates like George H.W. Bush and showing support for the National Rifle Association.

Norris is also an author, having written his autobiography, The Secret of Inner Strength, and the self-help book, The Secret Power Within: Zen Solutions to Real Problems.