Biography
Standing 6 ft 2 in tall and weighing 220 pounds, Chuck Hicks was an American actor, stuntman, and stunt coordinator active in films since 1952. While attending school in Burbank, California, he earned a reputation as a versatile athlete. He later attended Loyola University on a scholarship, where he played football and rugby and became the heavyweight boxing champion. After serving in the U.S. Navy, following time in the Merchant Marine, Hicks won another heavyweight boxing title in 1946. Known as 'Chuck Daley' during his brief professional boxing career, which ended due to a broken hand, he portrayed a formidable mechanical fighter called the Maynard Flash in the 1963 film The Steel, featuring a robot face mask designed by William Tuttle.
After being released by the L.A. Rams football team in 1951, Hicks worked as a lifeguard at the Pickwick Pool in Burbank before securing work as a movie extra. He frequently served as a stand-in for Clint Walker on the western TV series Cheyenne beginning in 1955. Over the next six decades, he worked as a stand-in or stunt double for actors including Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Brian Dennehy, and Paul Sorvino.
Onscreen, Hicks often portrayed characters receiving beatings from Clint Eastwood in films such as Dirty Harry (1971), The Enforcer (1976), and Bronco Billy (1980). In the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, he had a small featured role as The Brow, a minor villain. Hicks appeared in countless minor roles as bar fighters, henchmen, bodyguards, corrupt cops, bouncers, prizefighters, and even zombies. He served as stunt coordinator for the iconic fight scene in Cool Hand Luke (1967).
Hicks retired in 2010. He was a former president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures, an inductee into the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Screen Actors Guild.
