Chuck Norris (born 1940, real name Carlos Ray Norris Jr.) is a living illustration of the popular American concept of “self-made man”. For years, his family stumbled on the brink of poverty, moving from trailers to houses that look more like slums. Every year there is a new school, which means new quarrels and fights with new classmates. Carlos got it - he did not play sports and could not stand up for himself.
For boys like Carlos Rae, the ultimate dream was police service. No special education is required, the work is not dusty, there is no need to hunch back at the conveyor belt or in the farm field. The stars above Norris' head were so fortunate that his mother's second marriage allowed him to graduate from school before leaving for the army, and in the army he acquired a profession that would determine his entire future life.
Not to say that he was lucky. Several times in his life, he clung to the slightest chance and tried to realize it with unbending persistence. Already in adulthood, Chuku repeatedly started all over again, practically from scratch, and each time he got up after the blows of fate. 
Chuck Norris never forgets what circles he came out of. Unable to donate large sums to charity, he uses his fame, acquaintances and organizational skills in order to help children from poor and disadvantaged families.
1. Carlos Ray Norris Jr. was born a weak child weighing 2 kg 950 g. His mother, 18-year-old Wilma Norris, had to suffer for a whole week - she got to the hospital on March 3, and her son was born on the 10th. Immediately after birth, the baby could not breathe, and therefore his skin quickly acquired a dark purple hue. The father, who was present, like both grandmothers, at the birth, when he saw his son, immediately fainted. It can be understood - a white man married to a white woman has a black son, and this is in 1940! Doctors were ready for the surprise - the boy was given oxygen, and soon his skin acquired a normal shade.
2. Chuck has half Irish and half Indian blood in his veins. The Irish were the paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother. The other grandmother, like the second grandfather, belonged to the Cherokee tribe.
3. The Norris family could not boast of special wealth. They lived mainly in small rural towns. Chuck remembers the moves that took place almost every year. The father drank heavily, sometimes demanding that his wife give back the money set aside for food. He visited the war, but could not overcome his addiction to the green serpent. But he earned a disability pension. The $ 32 pension was just enough to rent a cheap apartment. After the birth of his third son, Aaron, Ray Norris hit a woman in a car and got six months in prison. After serving, he began to drink even more and beat his wife a couple of times. Only after that did Wilma leave him. The divorce was filed when Chuck was already 16 years old.
4. Two cents for a small glass bottle, 5 cents for a large one, a cent for a pound of scrap metal. These were the first earnings of little Chuck. He gave all the money he earned to his mother, for which he sometimes received 10 cents to go to the cinema. Movies were the only entertainment for the boy and his brother Wyland - the family was so poor that the children did not have a single toy. One day, to buy mom a beautiful Christmas card, Chuck saved up money for six months.
Perhaps these are all pictures of Chuck Norris as a child.
5. Wyland Norris was killed in the summer of 1970 in Vietnam. His death was a big blow to Chuck. Obviously, the transcendent jingoism of some of Chuck Norris's films can be explained by the pain of this loss that is still felt.
Wyland Norris returned from Vietnam in such a coffin
6. The turning point in Chuck's life came at the age of 17 when his mother married George Knight. A stable family life affected both his studies and the physical and psychological development of the young man. George was good to his adopted sons. Seeing that the guy was embarrassed to drive up to the school in a badly shabby "Dodge", bought for his own earnings, his stepfather invited him to take his new "Ford".
7. At 17, Chuck Norris was serious about joining the Navy. In those years, to a guy who did not have money for college, there was actually one way to achieve something - to enroll in the army. However, Wilma Norris did not sign a permit to serve - you must first graduate from school. But two months after graduation, Norris was already at Lackland Air Force Base, where his colleagues immediately began to call him "Chuck".
8. In December 1958, Norris married his classmate Diana Holechek, whom they had been dating for the entire senior year. Young years lived in Arizona, where Chuck served, and then he went to Korea, while Diana remained in the United States. The marriage lasted 30 years, but it can hardly be called successful, although Chuck and Diana raised two excellent sons. The spouses often parted, then started all over again, but, in the end, according to the actor, they became infinitely far from each other.
With the first wife
9. Norris began to engage in martial arts only at the age of 19. In Korea, he first enrolled in judo classes, but almost immediately broke his collarbone. Walking in the vicinity of the base, he saw Koreans in some kind of white pajamas, practicing punches and kicks. Back at the base, Chuck found out from a judo coach that he had seen tansudo, one of the Korean styles of karate. Despite a broken collarbone and the coach's skepticism, Norris immediately began training. They lasted 5 hours 6 days a week. It was incredibly hard for the American - at school, athletes of all levels were engaged at the same time, that is, a newcomer in a pair could well get the owner of a black belt. Chuck had no strength, no harshness, no stretching, but he practiced very hard. The first achievements appeared within a few months. At the demonstration performances, the coach pointed out to Chuck a stack of tiles and ordered him to break it. Chuck completed the task at the cost of broken arm bones. Norris passed the black belt exam on the second attempt - waiting for his turn for the first time, he froze and did not have time to warm up. Chak returned from Korea with a black belt in tansudo and a brown belt in judo.
10. Norris got his first skills in teaching martial arts while still in the army. His independent studies were seen by other military men. They asked to share knowledge and skills with them. In a couple of months, hundreds of servicemen were coming to classes. Chuck's career began roughly the same when he returned to the United States: classes in the yard with his brothers, neighbors, rumors and, in the end, a debt of $ 600, paid for the renovation and rent of the hall, pompously called the “Chuck Norris School”. Subsequently, the school grew into a corporation with 32 branches. However, by that time, Chuck and his partner Joe Wall had already sold it for $ 120,000. And in 1973, Norris had to raise money so that the school named after him did not go bankrupt - the new owners made a lot of debts. Then they had to pay off for several more years.
11. In the late 1960s, Chuck Norris actively participated in various karate competitions, but he did it not for the sake of titles or money, but for the sake of advertising his school. In the United States, karate was then very popular, but very poorly organized. Competitions were held according to different rules, the fighters were forced to hold several (sometimes more than 10) fights a day, the prize money was small. But the advertising was very effective. Celebrities began enrolling in Norris' schools. And after winning the All-American Karate Championship, Norris met Bruce Lee. The athletes got to talking, and then for 4 hours at night, in the hotel corridor, they demonstrated punches and ligaments to each other.
12. The debut of Norris in the movie was the picture "Team of Destroyers." An aspiring actor had to say three words and land one kick. Chuck was stunned by the sheer size of the film set, which looked like a human anthill. Excited, he could not really pronounce the phrase, and in the first take from the heart he punched the main star of the film Dean Martin on the head with his foot. However, the second take was shot smoothly, and Norris' participation in the filming was assessed positively.
13. Despite a rather extensive filmography, Norris cannot be called a movie star of the first magnitude. The box office record for films in which Chuck was the main star was set by the picture “Missing”. The film brought the creators $ 23 million. All other films were less grossing. For the most part, they paid off anyway, since the budgets were very insignificant - from 1.5 to 5 million dollars.
14. One day Chuck Norris appeared in court as an expert. Renowned lawyer David Glickman recruited him to a trial in which his client was accused of first-degree murder. Having found his wife at home in an unambiguous society with her lover, the accused shot him with a pistol. The defense was based on the fact that the victim was the owner of a black belt in karate, and this can be equated with the possession of a deadly weapon. The prosecutor who supported the prosecution asked Norris if the karate fighter had a chance against the pistol. He answered - yes, if the distance between the opponents is less than three meters, and the pistol is not cocked. An experiment was conducted right in the courtroom, and three times Norris managed to strike before the prosecutor had time to cock the trigger and point the gun at him.
15. The actor cooperates with the make a wish charity foundation. This foundation is engaged in helping seriously ill children, while fulfilling their wishes. Children are often invited to the filming of Walker, The Texas Ranger. In addition, Chuck Norris, together with several politicians and businessmen, founded the Kick the Drugs Out of America program, which aims not only to fight drugs, but also to promote sports, in particular, karate. Over the two decades of the program, it has reached tens of thousands of children. The program is now called KICKSTART.
16. Besides karate and cinema, Norris has successfully competed in various races. He won several off-road races in which celebrities competed. He achieved even greater success in superboat racing, setting, in particular, a world record. True, this career quickly ended. After the husband of the princess of Monaco Stefano Kasiraghi died in one of the races, the film studio, which signed a long-term contract with Norris, forbade him to risk his life.
17. On November 28, 1998, Chuck Norris and Gina O'Kelly got married after a year of marriage. In August 2001, the couple had twins, a boy and a girl. The epic of their birth began even before conception - in 1975, Norris made himself a vasectomy, after which it is very difficult to conceive a child, and Gina was not all right. But as a result of a series of procedures, the doctors managed to fertilize several eggs, 4 of which were placed in the uterus. The pregnancy was very difficult, the babies were born as a result of the operation and for a long time were connected to artificial lung ventilation devices. The efforts of parents and doctors were not in vain - Dakota and Danilo are growing up healthy children.
Chuck and Gina with grown-up twins
18. In 2012 Chuck Norris left the cinema in order to devote all his time to his sick wife. During her arthritis treatment, Gina had MRI scans several times. During this procedure, the so-called. contrast agent that helps to get a clearer picture. Many contrast agents contain toxic gadolinium. After a sharp deterioration in Gina's health, doctors for a long time could not explain its cause. The woman herself found the symptoms of her ailment on the Internet. Now she is taking medications that help remove heavy metals from the body.
19. In 2017, Chuck himself was in trouble with health. In less than an hour, he suffered two heart attacks. It is good that at the time of the first attack, he was in the hospital, where resuscitators promptly arrived. They had already taken the actor to the hospital when the second attack overtook him. The body withstood these troubles, and Chuck Norris quickly recovered.
20. In January 2018, Norris and his Top Kick Productions filed a lawsuit against Sony Pictures Television and CBS Corporation. The plaintiffs are demanding to recover in their favor $ 30 million in proceeds from the Walker, Texas Ranger series, which the defendants deliberately withheld. We are talking about a common scheme for reducing the declared revenue from the implementation of large projects in show business. The performers, in this case Norris, are contractually required to pay the agreed fee plus a percentage of the income. This income is understated in every possible way, and as a result, the huge commercial success of the film or TV series is loudly reported, and according to the accounting documents, it turns out that the project barely paid off.
Television bosses didn't hesitate to cheat the Texas Ranger
