Robert Carradine, the youngest of his prolific Hollywood household and whose greatest hit was the 1984 comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” has died at 71.
In a Tuesday assertion, his household mentioned he lived with bipolar dysfunction for 20 years. His brother informed Deadline that Carradine died by suicide.
“We want people to know it, and there is no shame in it,” Keith Carradine informed Deadline. “It is an illness that got the best of him, and I want to celebrate him for his struggle with it, and celebrate his beautiful soul. He was profoundly gifted, and we will miss him every day.”
Known for each his movie and tv work, Robert Carradine labored steadily within the business for over 40 years. Though he collaborated with a few of the most revered administrators of the day, he by no means gained the worldwide recognition of his extra well-known siblings Keith Carradine (additionally the daddy of Martha Plimpton) and half-brother David Carradine, who died in 2009.
Robert Carradine, a Los Angeles native and son to character actor John Carradine, was launched to audiences with roles on the tv sequence “Bonanza” in 1971 and within the John Wayne western “The Cowboys” in 1972.
Despite his household background, performing wasn’t his first calling, although.
“I always had a passion to be a race car driver, and that’s what I thought I was going to do, and at some penultimate moment … I think I was sitting with my brother David when ‘The Cowboys’ was being cast, and they were interested in David as the bad guy, and he didn’t want to be the guy that shot John Wayne in the back,” Carradine recalled in a 2013 interview with Popdose. “But he said, ‘You know, it is called The Cowboys, and they’re meeting all these young guys. Why don’t you go in?’”
In addition to starring in a short-lived tv spinoff of “The Cowboys,” and showing alongside David Carradine in his widespread ABC sequence “Kung Fu,” he would go on to nab roles in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” Hal Ashby’s Vietnam drama “Coming Home,” and Samuel Fuller’s World War II movie “The Big Red One.”
The heights of his brother David’s success eluded Robert Carradine, however the two may typically be seen in the identical tasks, together with in Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders” and Paul Bartel’s “Cannonball.”
Robert Carradine’s greatest hit would are available 1984 with the off-color comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” through which he performed head nerd Lewis Skolnick, along with his abrupt, infectious and guttural snigger. He reprised the position for the big-screen sequel and two made-for-television follow-ups, and continued to pay homage to the beloved character with a visitor position on the sequence “Robot Chicken” and as a co-host (with “Revenge of the Nerds” co-star Curtis Armstrong) of the popular culture competitors present “King of the Nerds,” which aired for 3 seasons.
In the late Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, in line with the household assertion, Carradine realized his racing ambitions and was a driver for Lotus. In the 2000s, Carradine gained small-screen success in The Disney Channel’s “Lizzie McGuire” because the eponymous character’s father.
“It’s really hard to face this reality about an old friend,” Hilary Duff, who performed Lizzie McGuire, wrote on Instagram. “There was so much warmth in the McGuire family and I always felt so cared for by my on-screen parents. I’ll be forever grateful for that. I’m deeply sad to learn Bobby was suffering.”
Work remained constant even when the tasks diminished in status and high quality. Then Quentin Tarantino, ever the champion of fading character actors, solid Carradine in “Django Unchained” as one of many trackers within the 2012 movie after seeing a “very furry” {photograph}, as Carradine informed Popdose.
In 2015, Carradine was cited for a Colorado crash that injured him and his spouse, Edith Mani. They later divorced, after greater than 25 years of marriage.
Carradine’s survivors embody his three youngsters, actor Ever Carradine, Marika Reed Carradine and Ian Alexander Carradine.
“Whenever anyone asks me how I turned out so normal, I always tell them it’s because of my dad. I knew my dad loved me, I knew it deep in my bones, and I always knew he had my back,” Ever Carradine wrote on Instagram. “I think it’s partly because we basically grew up together. Twenty years age difference really isn’t that much, and while I never ever thought of him as a sibling, I did always think of him as my partner. We were in it together.”
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