Outside Context

25 Novem­ber 2005

‘Kar­ate Kid’ Star Pat Mor­ita Dies
The Kar­ate Kid star Pat Mor­ita has died at his Las Vegas home. He was 73. The actor and comedian, whose por­trayal of Mr. Miy­agi in the 1984 movie earned him an Oscar nom­in­a­tion, passed away on Thursday of nat­ural causes, accord­ing to his wife of 12 years Evelyn. She says in a state­ment, “(My hus­band) ded­ic­ated his entire life to act­ing and com­edy.” For years, the actor, real name Nor­iy­uki Mor­ita, played small roles in such films as Thor­oughly Mod­ern Mil­lie and TV series such as The Odd Couple and Green Acres. His first break­through came with clas­sic TV show Happy Days, and he fol­lowed with his own brief series Mr. T and Tina. The Kar­ate Kid spawned three sequels end­ing with 1994’s The Next Kar­ate Kid, which paired him with a young Hil­ary Swank. More recently, Mor­ita provided the voice for a char­ac­ter in the 1998 Dis­ney movie Mulan. Born in north­ern Cali­for­nia on June 28, 1932 to migrant fruit pick­ers, Mor­ita spent most of his early years in the hos­pital with spinal tuber­cu­losis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American intern­ment camp in Ari­zona dur­ing World War II. After the war, Morita’s fam­ily tried to repair their fin­ances by run­ning a Sac­ra­mento res­taur­ant. It was there that Mor­ita first showed an interest in a show­busi­ness career, even­tu­ally com­mit­ting to it full time at the age of 30. He is sur­vived by his wife and three daugh­ters from a pre­vi­ous marriage.