Chad McQueen, Karate Kid actor, dies at 63
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Chad McQueen died on Sept 11 at his home in Palm Desert, California. His lawyer and friend said the cause was organ failure.
PHOTO: AFP
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CALIFORNIA – Chad McQueen, an actor who was best known for the role of Dutch in the Karate Kid movie franchise and who was the son of actor Steve McQueen, died on Sept 11 at his home in Palm Desert, California. He was 63.
His family announced his death in a post on social media paired with a photo of him as a boy with his famous father. His lawyer and friend Arthur Barens said the cause was organ failure.
Chad McQueen was involved in more than 25 movies and television shows as an actor, a producer and in other capacities. But he is most widely recognised for his role as Dutch in the 1984 teenage classic The Karate Kid.
Dutch was a troublemaking bully of the Cobra Kai dojo who ran with Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and his gang, showing no mercy and jumping up and down in excitement as they delivered a brutal beating to Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio in the title role) on Halloween night.
He reprised the role of Dutch in the sequel, The Karate Kid Part II, released in 1986.
McQueen went on to appear in other films, including New York Cop, a 1993 action film about a Japanese detective living illegally in the United States; and Red Line, a 1995 thriller about a car thief who is blackmailed.
But he did not stay in Hollywood for long after that. He again followed in his father’s footsteps by switching to auto racing.
“I was surrounded by the two things: film and motor sports. And motor sports always seemed to attract me more,” McQueen said in a 2017 interview with the film website FlickFeast. He described his father’s well-known love of cars as so infectious that “it screwed me up for life”.
McQueen competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 12 Hours of Sebring, among other events. In 2010, he founded McQueen Racing, a company that develops high-performance cars and motorcycles.
He was seriously injured in February 2006 while practising for the Daytona International Speedway’s Rolex 24 event. He broke his neck, a leg, an arm and ribs, suffered a collapsed lung and was in a coma for nearly a month, he told The Sunday Times of London in 2017.
“Would I change anything?” he said. “No, I wouldn’t. Motor sport is the strongest drug in the world.”
Chadwick Steven McQueen was born Dec 28, 1960, in Los Angeles. His father was the highest-paid movie star of the 1960s and 1970s. His mother, Neile Adams, was a Filipino-American actress, singer, and dancer. He grew up in Southern California.
His first film credit was in the 1978 film Skateboard, considered the first feature film about the 1970s skateboarding craze. He also appeared in Hadley’s Rebellion, a 1983 drama about a small-town boy’s passion for wrestling; Fever Pitch, a 1985 drama about a famous sports writer who becomes a compulsive gambler; and Surface To Air (1998), an action film about two brothers, one in the Navy and the other a Marine, who travel to the Persian Gulf to stop a coup.
On television, he appeared in the series V (1984) and Jesse Hawkes (1989), and in a number of TV movies, including Search And Rescue (1994). He was also seen in the 2005 documentary Steve McQueen: The Essence Of Cool.
His marriage to actress Stacey Toten ended in divorce. He later married Jeanie Galbraith, who survives him, along with a son from his first marriage, Steven R. McQueen, an actor known for his roles on the television series The Vampire Diaries (2009 to 2017) and Chicago Fire (2012 to present); and two children from his second marriage – a son, Chase, and a daughter, Madison. NYTIMES
