F orty-one years ago, Ralph Macchio landed the role of a bullied high school student who learns karate from his apartment building’s handyman in The Karate Kid. Few people involved with the movie thought they were creating a mega-blockbuster, but it wound up grossing an astounding $130.8 million on a mere $8 million budget. It was followed by two sequels starring Macchio, and a fourth film where Hilary Swank became The Next Karate Kid.
In 2018, Karate Kid superfans Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg convinced Macchio to put the gi back on for the Netflix series Cobra Kai, which moved the story into the next generation, while still chronicling the lives of the surviving characters from the original films. Once again, the project wildly surpassed expectations, running for six seasons and racking up near-record audience numbers on the streamer.
Cobra Kai has been off the air for only a matter of months, but this week, Macchio returned as Daniel LaRusso once again: In the new theatrical movie Karate Kid: Legends, he’s paired with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han character from the 2010 Karate Kid remake.
It could easily frustrate an actor to be so closely associated with a single character, particularly one they’ve been playing for decades, but Macchio, 63, has come to terms with it. “I don’t want to call it a double-edged sword, but it’s made things challenging, certainly,” he tells Rolling Stone via Zoom from his home in California. “No matter how many times you want to shout out My Cousin Vinny or The Outsiders, it’s Karate Kid that people bring up.” Still he adds, “It sounds lame, but that character and the franchise brings joy to kids from six to 86. In this world, if that’s my footprint, it could be worse.”
For Rolling Stone‘s Last Word column, Macchio talked about the pitfalls of child stardom, managing the slow times in his career, the prospects of a Cobra Kai movie, and more.
What are the best and worst parts of success?
The best part is getting a chance to pay a little bit of it forward. I enjoy sharing with the next generation a piece of the gift that I was given, because I got pretty lucky. When talking with the young actors on Cobra Kai, along with my kids and their friends, they kind of lean in and they want to hear these stories. They’re usually positive stories, and I feel like I’m passing on some positivity in a world that honestly is not always so positive.
The worst part is that you’re under a microscope anywhere you go. You have to stay home to have the “off” switch. Also, when you lose success, you put so much pressure on yourself to have it again. And that’s probably the worst part, the amount of pressure you put on yourself.
What music moves you the most?
I’m on this Roy Orbison tear right now, just his voice, that music, those songs… I have just gone down that rabbit hole of his music. And Springsteen never gets old for me.
Do you have a favorite Springsteen song?
I’m not really original here since everyone love this song, but “Thunder Road.” It’s very cinematic. And I also love “Long Walk Home” right now. His music just speaks to you at different stages of your life. And obviously, I’m into Coldplay now since I got to do that music video with them. That was a really cool moment.
You’ve been with your wife for nearly 40 years. That’s about 400 years in Hollywood time. What’s the secret to a long marriage?
For me, our relationship always felt right and instinctively magical from the get-go. That’s because she was way out of my league. I was punching way up a couple of weight classes. And then for a long-term relationship, you need to have a foundation that’s always there. It’s about working together for what you believe is meant to be. And there are plenty of times where it doesn’t feel all right, and that’s part of the journey. The work and the sensibilities of myself and Phyllis, my wife, are… I don’t want to use the term stick-to-itiveness because that is kind of a chintzy word, but you have to sometimes tuck that football in and keep your eye on the prize, even through the turbulent times, because you know the prize is great.
You’ve always looked at least 10 years younger than you actually are. How much of that is living well and how much of that is genetic?
It’s mainly genes, but I am healthy and I do live well. I don’t smoke. I’m not a drug user, besides alcohol when I want to have a drink or some wine. I’m a big fan of great wine. So, it’s my parents’ fault. I blame them. They screwed it up. They made this happen. But it’s getting tough. I like being a little bit further away from the camera these days. When they send in pictures and they say, “This is the shot we’d like to use. We’ll clean up Ralph’s neck. We’ll take those lines out in that droopy part” — that’s all new now. That’s happening more, but I guess we call it the Macchio curve. I get to wait a little bit longer before that stuff happens.
What’s the most indulgent purchase you’ve ever made?
Right after The Outsiders, before The Karate Kid, I had just enough to buy the biggest Mercedes that there was. It was like the 560 SEL 1983 or whatever this was. It was a big black Mercedes. I mean, it must’ve looked like a little kid driving his father’s Cadillac. I don’t know why. I just wanted that. It was like your rich uncle’s car. At the time, it was $55,000.
You avoided this curse, but why do you think so many child stars turned to drugs when they got older?
There’s a void when fame disappears, when you have it and you lose it. When you wave to that guard on the movie lot and he just says, “Hi,” and then you come back two years later, and they ask to see your license and make you wait. That plays on certain people, especially when you’re young.
But this is not to say that I didn’t have times where I might not have been the most pleasant guy to be around, even for my wife and my family, because I was a little rudderless. I was like, “What am I going to do?”
You didn’t work a ton in the Nineties and early 2000s. What filled your time?
Some of that was starting my family. My daughter was born ’92, my son was born ’95. So, I was kind of around for all that, for the most part. I would pop out to L.A. or New York, do some theater, do a few guest spots in television shows or whatever, indie movie here or there.
There were times I was frustrated with my career. When I look at it now, it’s like I designed it perfectly. I got to be there (with my kids). I had the big rush at the beginning. I got to be a dad and not be an absent person, and a husband, for that matter. And now to watch them witness all this, what’s going on now with Cobra Kai, and see them champion me and cheer it on, it’s an embarrassment of riches in a way.
What’s your best advice to an actor in the middle of a dry spell?
Stay creative. You can always be creative, if that’s part of what’s missing. If the fame part and being successful is what’s missing, then maybe you’re in the wrong deal, because none of that’s in your control. Your creativity is in some of your control, because you could venture out and try and take risks. Whether you can make a living at it or not is a whole other story, and that’s really the challenge.
You did Dancing With the Stars. Did that lead to offers for more reality shows you turned down?
Yes. And I passed on Dancing With the Stars numerous times before that. It was just the right time to do it, and it turned out well for me. But yes, then you become in that pool of, I’m a Celebrity, Kick Me Off a Running Train, or Fear Factor: Celebrity Africa or whatever. So, I’ve got plenty of those Masked Singer offers. I understand the success of that show. It’s just not of interest to me right now.
But the one thing Dancing With the Stars does, and I think it gives the credit to that show, is it’s not train-wreck TV. They really want people to do well. You look at The Karate Kid, it’s the underdog story, and that’s what kind of worked for me. I was sort of a parallel of that guy. I had the fans kind of embracing the older version of this kid.
What’s the biggest difference between Eighties fame and 2020s fame?
There was a lot more drugs in your face then. I was too afraid to get near it, but it was all over the place. I was around it all the time. You also had a little bit of time if something went wrong back then. Now, you have no time. Something goes wrong, it’s out there. It’s just in your feed, people are taunting you. It’s super-challenging. I don’t know how these young actors and young famous people deal with it. But on the flip side to that, they also can make themselves famous from it without having done anything, really.
Cobra Kai was basically the biggest show on Netflix for years. How were you processing that after all these years out of the limelight?
Sometimes I use the word “stupid.” This is just stupid how successful this is, but that’s really underselling it. I think a lot of credit goes to the original filmmakers back in ’84 and the writer, Robert Mark Kamen, who created the story and these characters and that Mr. Miyagi, human Yoda, that was that kind of secret sauce of the whole franchise. And then Jon, Josh, and Hayden who write this show and care so much. They flipped the script on characters and brought in new ones coming from different angles.
I remember an executive said, “Congratulations on Cobra Kai. Everything old is new again.” And I responded, “You know what? It’s always been there. It’s always been the new nostalgia, in a way.” But it is blessed from somewhere above, because it really has had such a warm embrace from what is now close to four generations that were waiting for the big finale, which really lands.
Is any part of this a little bittersweet since Pat Morita isn’t here to see it?
A little bit, but I feel confident in saying I’ve done him and our partnership well. I feel strongly about that in the show, and hopefully what we’ll see with the Karate Kid: Legends movie coming. I’m always wanting to protect the honesty of that partnership, which to me is the magic of The Karate Kid. Without Miyagi, there is no… We’re not doing any of this.
A lot of fans were expecting to see Hilary Swank revive her character from The Next Karate Kid in the last season. Did they try to get her on?
Yeah, they tried to. There’s nothing Jon, Josh, and Hayden did not try to check every box, and they checked almost every single box. I think they connected with her, but I think she just didn’t want to do it for whatever the reason. It just didn’t make sense for whatever was going on in her life at that time. And I wasn’t deep into any of those conversations, I just knew they took a stab at getting her on. They had one version of the story with her, and another version without her.
I presume she would have resolved the story about Miyagi and the stolen necklace.
Yeah. That was the intention.
I really loved the Cobra Kai finale. The scene that struck me the most was the final confrontation between Johnny and Kreese in the parking lot. Billy (Zabka, who plays Johnny) deserves an Emmy for that.
Yeah, he really went for it. It was shot two days after my scene (with the CGI Pat Morita). I said, “Hi, did my ‘Cobra Cry’ scene, how was yours?” He goes, “I think I nailed it.” He felt really good about it. And it’s great because you’re following his character the whole way, and he does a terrific job in the show.
Wrapping up the storylines of so many characters must have been tough.
That’s part of the challenge. And it was nice for them to have the 15 episodes to be able to do that. The most emotional scene to me is with Daniel and Samantha, the goodbye scene where she’s heading off to Okinawa. The Daniel and Samantha relationship from the first episode of the show has been at the heart of depth for my character and her. So, that was really moving to me.
Do you think the original Karate Kid would get a green light by a Hollywood studio today?
It probably would’ve been on the Family Channel or a faith-based network. It could maybe have been a Little Miss Sunshine-like Fox Searchlight movie. You’d like to believe it can cut through, because the story worked so well. But on paper, it’s another time, man, it’s really hard.
When you first heard about Karate Kid: Legends, did you feel any hesitancy about going back to the character yet again?
Yeah. But even with Cobra Kai, I knew it was time to jump in the water, I just didn’t know the temperature of the pool. With Karate Kid: Legends, it was exciting to look at, “Wow, I started this on the big screen. Can I end it on the big screen?”
Connecting the worlds was the challenge. They figured out a way to do that that is organic to a scene in The Karate Kid Part II, that people on the internet are starting to figure out, which connects that karate comes from kung fu, which is the truth. My thing was trying to uphold the integrity of Miyagi and Daniel and the mythology of the original movie.
And so it required a little bit of back and forth work, and working with Jackie Chan. The movie picks up years after Cobra Kai. There’s a different version of Daniel that is more at peace in his life and more Miyagi, in a way.
Did you know Jackie Chan prior to this?
I did not. But I did meet him at the premiere of the 2010 (Karate Kid) remake. But that always just felt like another island. Now it feels like part of the ecosystem in the grand universe. I feel very Luke Skywalker. I could be on The Mandalorian, and I could be in a Star Wars movie.
What was it like working with Ben Wang, the young star of Legends? It must have been cool to watch someone start a journey that you started 40 years ago.
Exactly. He’s terrific. He’s also a dedicated young martial artist. He speaks fluent Mandarin. He checked so many of the boxes, and he has a very winning personality, which is super-important. And if you’ve seen the trailer, you can tell that it feels cinematic. It doesn’t feel like the original Karate Kid movie, the Eighties, and it doesn’t feel like Cobra Kai, either. And I like that, because it says that we could exist in this place.
Do you think this is your last time playing Daniel?
Might I do my Gran Torino version? Listen, I hope the movie does well. I want it to be the next stage of other chapters, and I’d love there to be a Cobra Kai movie in two years from now as well. I mean, why not keep the party going as long as it can be rooted in some form of genuine truth? Listen, if you came to me in 1995 and said, “You’re going to play Daniel LaRusso again.” I would say, “It’s never going to happen.” So, never say never. Never say never.
You don’t see Kreese or Terry Silver actually die when the boat blows up in the Cobra Kai finale. Maybe at least one of them lives…
I know. It’s not my single favorite moment in the story. And the fact that nobody mentions anything about it… Listen, what can you say? They wanted to do that.
What do you hope to accomplish in the next few years?
I’d like to do a little more directing. I directed Episode Three of this season of Cobra Kai. I really loved that. I love working with the actors. I love taking a piece of what I’ve learned from the Coppolas and the Avildsens. I remember them setting shots or discussing something, and just taking that and implementing it myself. That’s something that I have a lot more room to grow with.
I did this show called The Deuce, which I didn’t have much to do on. It was for HBO, but I was in 17 episodes of it, I think. And I would love to find another great ensemble — a show like Succession, which I love so much, or even Shrinking, which I just finished watching.
I don’t need to be the lead. I’d love to fit in some sort of family that maybe is not about “every argument needs to be solved with a karate bloodbath.”