Question: What was your relationship with Pat Morita like? Ralph Macchio: On screen, it was magic. I call it soulful magic. He and I were close, friendly.
He continued, "Pat was a fierce martial artist. But my memories with him are galvanized in his calm, gentle and supportive demeanor. I considered him a friend and my ultimate cheerleader.
Though the duo have only spoken highly of each other in the press, their friendship didn't kindle until years later — 2005, to be exact — when they reunited for the first time ever at Pat Morita (a.k.a. Mr. Miyagi)'s, funeral. “He caught my eye,” Ralph said in his memoir about the meeting.
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.
Ralph Macchio Opens Up About Pat Morita Almost Missing Out on the Role of Mr. Miyagi | Tonight Show
Is Ralph Macchio friends with William Zabka?
"For Billy and I, the depth and level of our friendship and our history together has just gone beyond, just like this show has," Macchio tells PEOPLE of working on Cobra Kai with Zabka.
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 has a younger brother named Steven. 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.
Before filming The Karate Kid, Pat Morita was not a martial arts master. He did not have any experience in karate prior to making the films. However, that does not mean he and the rest of the cast were not placed under a training program.
He did not speak it as a child, but you can see here that he began learning it at some point. Here he writes his last name in Japanese, but not quite the way a native Japanese-speaker would.
I was an actor. He lived in California, Hawaii and Vegas, and I lived in New York, and we went on with our lives. But there was that special relationship/connection that when I looked at him, it was nothing but love, from the aspect of understanding we had something special. He died in 2005 at 73.
“As an older person, there was a recognition of missteps, of things I should have done differently.” He also said he regrets not calling Shue at the time, to see how she felt, or going to the producers to object to her removal.
Unlike his broken English-speaking characters, Morita spoke with no accent and hardly knew any Japanese. He didn't even know karate. He was happy to insinuate he did his own stunts while, in reality, a stunt double did much of the heavy lifting.
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.
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.
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.
Does Ralph Macchio, the actor from The Karate Kid, actually have any karate training in real life? Not by a long shot; though it should be noted that neither were cast to be great martial artists, and instead were hired to be amazing actors.
The actor grew up in New York and had previously played Daniel LaRusso, a New Jersey native, in 1984's The Karate Kid. Macchio has a prominent Long Island accent that prevented him from playing McFly, a resident of Hill Valley, California.
He was not at all experienced in martial arts prior to the filming of The Karate Kid (1984). He was actually an accomplished wrestler. However, in the years since, he has earned a black belt in Tang Soo Do.
Zabka played Johnny Lawrence, the main antagonist to the title character and protagonist played by Ralph Macchio. Zabka had no training in karate at the time but was an accomplished wrestler. Participating in the film inspired Zabka to learn the martial art of Tang Soo Do and he later earned a second–degree green belt.
