Karate Kid Sequel

Good Macchio article
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For 30 years and more, whenever the American actor Ralph Macchio attends a sports event, the chances are that a live image of his face will flash up on the arena’s big screen.

Macchio’s name will appear, always accompanied by a three-word explanation of who he used to be. “Guys, remember the Karate Kid from the 1980s? He’s here, he’s alive, he watches baseball, too!”

Macchio is a fan of standup comedy. But if he sits in the audience at a show he must always be prepared to be singled out. “Hey Ralph, didn’t I see you waxing on and waxing off at a car wash? You guys might know Macchio from The Karate Kid trilogy. And if you don’t know him from those movies, then you don’t know him at all…”

A natural sweetheart, this 60-year-old has spent most of his life taking such indignities with good grace.

In 2018, after decades of scant employment, existing in the public mind as a where-are-they-now curiosity, Macchio found his professional stoicism rewarded. He made a comeback, taking part in a TV show called Cobra Kai that successfully revived the Karate Kid story for a new generation

of viewers on YouTube, then on Netflix. As recently as 2016, Macchio was able to mock himself at a charity event, revealing his secret to looking so young in middle age: “Not working.”

These days he has been working quite a lot. He is sent scripts. He won a part in a David Simondrama, The Deuce, for HBO. Soon he will publish an autobiography, Waxing On, that tells the story of his fast rise in the 1980s, his long, lean spell from the 1990s onwards, before his abrupt reinstatement to pop-culture relevance a few years ago. “It’s extraordinary how things come around,” Macchio says, cheerfully, when he joins me on a video call one day in September……


https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...e-after-the-karate-kid?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other