Actor Chuck Norris speaks with the media during a press conference prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Nov. 6, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. (Jerry Markland / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders March 19, 2026 at 1:56pm
After decades in the spotlight, the country’s most famous roundhouse-kicking conservative might be showing his age.
Chuck Norris, the actor and martial arts star, has been hospitalized in Hawaii after a medical emergency, the celebrity-centric website TMZ reported Thursday.
Characteristically, the man who’d just celebrated his 86th birthday was on the island of Kauai — engaged in physical training, according to TMZ.
EXCLUSIVE: Chuck Norris has been hospitalized after a medical emergency in Hawaii.
What we know: https://t.co/wWK8lZIpda pic.twitter.com/hNC5fMn8yR
— TMZ (@TMZ) March 19, 2026
Norris is an icon in both the martial arts and entertainment worlds — from big-screen appearances like 1972’s “The Way of the Dragon” with the legendary Bruce Lee, to an eight-season run on television with the “Walker, Texas Ranger” series in the 1990s and 2000s, to a fixed spot in American culture in the decades since.
He’s also known for outspoken conservative politics, telling an interviewer in 2014 that Democrats had “lost their way.”
“John F. Kennedy, today, would be a Republican, because then, the Democrats were more what the Republicans [are] today,” he said.
It was not a new position for him then. In a New York Times interview published in 1985, he made no bones about it.
“I am a conservative, a real flag waver, a big Ronald Reagan fan,” he said.
“I’m not so much a Republican or Democrat; I go more for the man himself. Ronald Reagan says what he thinks, he’s not afraid to speak his mind, even if he may be unpopular. I want a strong leader and he is a strong leader,” he remarked.
“And ever since he has been in office there has been a more positive, patriotic feeling in this country.”
But most of all, he’s known for being as tough as the roundhouse kicks he’s launched throughout his career.
That reputation for toughness showed up in the social media reaction to news of his hospitalization.
“A medical emergency has been hospitalized after a run in with Chuck Norris,” one user wrote.
“There I fixed it.”
There were countless more like that:
“A medical emergency has been hospitalized after a run in with Chuck Norris”
There I fixed it.
— baloney_and_cheese (@Baloney_and) March 19, 2026
For someone who makes onions cry. He’ll be alright.
— Daniel (@DanielMCharter) March 19, 2026
Medical emergency has my condolences.
— 2-Cross (@Cameron_611) March 19, 2026
Norris’ condition, meanwhile, wasn’t clear Thursday.
“Whatever happened must have occurred quickly, because we’re told on Wednesday he was training on the island,” TMZ reported.
“A friend of Chuck’s was on the phone with him, and we’re told Chuck was in good spirits and cracking jokes.”
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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