Of the four sons who followed their father, John Carradine, into acting, Keith had the most prestigious career, David netted the largest audience thanks to his early-1970s TV series Kung Fu, and the little-known Bruce amassed a meagre handful of minor credits. The youngest, Robert Carradine, acted continuously without ever becoming a star. He has taken his own life aged 71, after suffering from bipolar disorder, which was exacerbated by David’s death in 2009.
He had small roles in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973), where he was the long-haired gunman who shoots dead the drunk played by David, and as a tracker in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012). He also joined David and Keith as the three Younger brothers in Walter Hill’s western The Long Riders (1980), which populated its cast with other sets of real-life siblings, such as James and Stacy Keach playing Frank and Jesse James. Carradine’s aptitude with a gun led to him competing under the alias Bob Younger in quick-draw competitions organised by the Single Action Shooting Society.
A more prominent showcase for his talents was the Oscar-winning drama Coming Home (1978), in which he played a suicidal Vietnam veteran alongside Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern. A new generation came to know him as the endearing father of the title character played by Hilary Duff in the teen comedy series Lizzie McGuire (2001-04) as well as The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003).
Carradine enjoyed his biggest cult success in Revenge of the Nerds (1984), a comedy about gawky college misfits striking back against the jocks who eject them from their dormitory. The Los Angeles Times described the result as “an Armageddon of sexual and athletic swashbuckling”. The Hollywood Reporter complained of “several tasteless episodes” including an “odious” scene of the nerds spying on a female classmate during an intimate moment.
Shot for $6m, it rode the decade’s wave of raunchy crowd-pleasers (such as the Porky’s and Police Academy series), grossed more than $40m and spawned three sequels, all of which featured Carradine, as well as a reality TV show, King of the Nerds (2013-15), which he hosted.
He almost turned down the original movie. “The title was so off-putting to me that I didn’t even want to meet [the director],” he said last year. Nevertheless, he dressed accordingly – short haircut, thick-framed glasses – and, despite giving what he called a “lacklustre” audition, won the lead role of Lewis Skolnick, the computer science major with the honking laugh of a sealion.
That reluctance to audition was characteristic of a man who could often seem equivocal about his profession. “I didn’t want to be an actor,” he said of his film debut in The Cowboys (1972) at the age of 18. “My whole life at that point was cars and wanting to race.”
He was urged by David’s agent, Saul Krugman, to try out anyway for one of the juvenile roles. He won a part, which he reprised on a short-lived television spin-off two years later. His abiding memory was of being reduced to tears by the film’s star, John Wayne, after advising the senior actor on a line reading. Though, as Carradine pointed out proudly on the Fascination Street podcast last year, “when you watch the movie, he made the adjustment”.
Another run-in with a Hollywood titan occurred while making Sam Fuller’s second world war drama The Big Red One (1980). The veteran in that instance, Lee Marvin, asked the younger cast members: “Which one of you is Carradine?” After introducing himself, he was then told: “Fuck you, Carradine.” Marvin later explained: “Well, I figured I had to keep up with four of you young sons of bitches, and I better set the record straight right out of the gate. Besides, you were the only one I’d heard of.” When Carradine fell ill with food poisoning, Marvin forced him to drink a double shot of liqueur, put him to bed, sang to him on an acoustic guitar and kissed him on the forehead.
Carradine was born in Los Angeles, to John and his second wife, the actor Sonia Sorel (nee Henius). They divorced when Robert was two; his father was awarded custody of him and his brothers Keith and Christopher. (The only one of the five brothers not to pursue acting, Christopher became an architect.) Robert was educated at Hollywood high school. The boys were partly raised by John’s third wife, Doris Grimshaw; she died in 1971. Robert then lived on-and-off with David and his partner, the actor Barbara Hershey, and dropped out of school to make The Cowboys.
David gave him a small part in You and Me (1974), a buddy movie that he directed and starred in about a biker and a runaway boy, and a larger one in A Country Mile, a period musical that was never released due to rights issues.
The brothers also starred together in the comic action movie Cannonball (1976), released in the UK as Carquake, about an illegal coast-to-coast motor race. The younger Carradine played the winning driver.
His other films included the Jaws rip-off Orca (1977), Number One With a Bullet (1987), in which he and Billy Dee Williams played an odd-couple cop duo, a television adaptation of Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers (1993) and several pictures for John Carpenter, including Escape from LA (1996). Awaiting release is the horror comedy Sorority Shark Attack (2026).
In between movies, Carradine fulfilled his youthful ambition of racing cars professionally. He participated several times in the 24 Hours of Daytona race, driving a Ferrari Daytona and coming eighth overall in 1978 in a team that also included Paul Newman. When not racing, his vehicle of choice was a decommissioned police vehicle. “The thing about driving a police car in Los Angeles is people are real polite all of a sudden,” he said.
Keith and Christopher survive him, as does another half-brother, the actor Michael Bowen, who was Sorel’s son from a previous marriage. Carradine is also survived by Ever, his daughter from a relationship with Susan Snyder, and by Madrika and Ian, his children from his marriage to Edith Mani, which ended in divorce in 2018.
• Robert Reed Carradine, actor, born 24 March 1954; died 23 February 2026
