Ralph Macchio was 22 when he played the teenage underdog Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, even though the character was 17. Macchio aged two years between The Karate Kid Part II and The Karate Kid Part III, with the actor being 24 during filming.
Miyagi was 86 years old, when he died in 2011. In 1984, the year the first Karate Kid was filmed, his character would have been around 59 years old. The actor, Pat Morita, who played Mr. Miyagi was 52 years old in 1984.
What's even more surprising is that Macchio is actually five months older than actor Thomas Ian Griffith, who played Terry Silver in the third Karate Kid movie, and reprises his role in Cobra Kai. That said, Daniel LaRusso is 53 years old in the show, and Macchio is 61.
Apart from four jiu-jitsu lessons when I was 10, I had no martial arts experience. Before filming, I was trained in Okinawan Gōjū-ryū karate by Pat E Johnson, who coordinated the fight scenes and played the head referee in the tournament at the end of the film.
Ralph Macchio on Turning 60, Cobra Kai & Being Pitched Terrible Karate Kid Reboot Ideas
Why did Ralph Macchio stop making Karate Kid movies?
Despite his youthful appearance, Macchio was in his early thirties when shooting The Karate Kid Part III, and so was deemed too old to continue in the role for further movies.
The titular character, originally named Danny Webber, was renamed Daniel LaRusso to suit Macchio's Italian-American heritage. In the film, Daniel is a New Jersey kid who has just relocated to California and is suffering at the hands of a gang of boys who are part of a local karate school called Cobra Kai.
The Karate Kid is a semi-autobiographical story based on the life of its screenwriter, Robert Mark Kamen. At age 17, after the 1964 New York World's Fair, Kamen was beaten up by a gang of bullies. He thus began to study martial arts in order to defend himself.
Season 1. 34 years after the first film, Daniel is happily married to his wife Amanda Steiner, and has two children, Samantha (born 2002) and Anthony (born 2005). He and his wife own the LaRusso Auto Group, a chain of car dealerships in the San Fernando Valley.
Ralph's voice is just way different today. He was in his 20's back then when making the Karate Kid movies, so you'd think he would still sound like that today. In the 80's he had more of a Jersey accent too, but his voice just sounded different than it does today overall. It's softer now that it was back then.
Not much information is available for the salaries and backend points he earned for his original three The Karate Kid movies. It's likely that he made upwards of $200,000 at the most for the first, which was a good salary. He had already been in a bunch of TV shows and some movies, so $200,000 could have been offered.
His father is of half Italian and half Greek descent, and his mother is of Italian ancestry. In a 1980 screen test, Macchio said his family was from Naples. In 1979, Macchio graduated from Half Hollow Hills High School West in Dix Hills, New York.
Not before being cast as Mr. Miyagi, no. He did train with a reputable black belt for the films, a Tang Soo Do black belt/stuntman named Pat Johnson who befriended Chuck Norris at a tournament and would go on to study karate directly under Chuck Norris and teach at several of his gyms.
Often times he leaned into it, playing with different Asian accents, like how his Chinese accent for Arnold was supposed to be for a character originally meant to be Japanese. Many of his characters didn't have accents (Morita himself didn't have one and couldn't speak Japanese) but many did.
Both Macchio and Zabka agreed it is up to the fans to decide who is the bad guy in this franchise and stated both Johnny and Daniel have their evil moments in both Karate Kid and Cobra Kai.
Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Eric Stoltz and D. B. Sweeney. Ralph Macchio was ultimately cast on the strength of his performance as Johnny Cade in The Outsiders (1983). Macchio has stated that his performance as Johnny influenced the development of Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid.
In the All-Valley Tournament, it was Daniel LaRusso who famously won by beating Johnny Lawrence. However, that wasn't the only competition that Daniel won. In The Karate Kid III, he went up against Mike Barnes in the All-Valley Tournament and took first place trophy home once more.
Daniel "Dan" Macchio, the youngest member of the Macchio family, was born on Oct. 24, 1995. Daniel's name has a unique meaning, as it's both the name of the Karate Kid character that shot Macchio to fame and the name of Fierro's cousin and best friend.
They bond over their mutual amusement over how absurd it seems. Ali, Johnny, and Daniel then tell stories of high school over dinner. During this time, Ali reveals that what actually caused her breakup with Daniel was his jealousy over a college friend of hers (which Daniel mistook for a love affair).
Summary. Ralph Macchio was 22 when he played the teenage underdog Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, even though the character was 17. Macchio aged two years between The Karate Kid Part II and The Karate Kid Part III, with the actor being 24 during filming.
Originally Answered: Why didn't Ralph Macchio return as LaRusso in Karate Kid 4? He didn't want to be like Sylvester Stallone, doing Rocky or Rambo for 25 years. He wanted to do other projects, not just be tied to one thing.
The film is scheduled to be released on May 30, 2025 in the United States. The film was originally set to be released on June 7, 2024, but was delayed to December 13, 2024, due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. It was moved once more to May 30, 2025, so that it wouldn't conflict with the final season of Cobra Kai.
