He belonged to one of Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic acting families, and early in his film career he was often cast alongside his better-known siblings. His most famous screen role, though, may have been as the head “brother” in a fraternity of nerds and outcasts. Actor Robert Carradine, known for such movies as The Cowboys, The Long Riders, The Big Red One, and the Revenge of the Nerds series, died on February 23. He was 71 years old.
A native Californian, Robert was born in Los Angeles in 1954, the son of John Ford regular and horror film icon John Carradine and his second wife, actress/artist Sonia Sorel. He was the youngest of three actor Carradine siblings, after half-brother David and brother Keith. Robert’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and he grew up thinking his father’s third spouse was his birth mother until he learned the truth as a teenager. While in high school in the late ’60s Robert lived with David, already an established TV and film performer, in the Laurel Canyon section of Hollywood.
While he was equally interested in acting and racing (he took part in the 2000 24 Hours at Daytona competition), Robert pursued the family craft. His TV debut in a 1971 Bonanza episode. His first feature film appearance was as one of the young cattle drovers taken under the wing of veteran rancher John Wayne in 1972’s The Cowboys. Carradine would reprise his role as Slim in a short-lived 1974 TV adaptation. In 1973 Robert got the chance to kill his brother David–on-screen, of course–in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Not one to hold a grudge, David gave his sib a cameo in his directorial debut, the 1975 drama You and Me. Robert also turned up in an episode of David’s hit TV series Kung Fu.
In the mid- to late ’70s Carradine found steady screen work in such drive-in fare as Aloha, Bobby and Rose, Jackson County Jail, The Pom Pom Girls, and Massacre at Central High. Robert and David were rivals in an illegal cross-country road race in Paul Bartel’s 1976 action/comedy Cannonball. The next year fell victim to a vengeance-seeking cetacean in producer Dino De Laurentiis’ Jaws manqué Orca, the Killer Whale. One 1970s performance that won Robert critical acclaim was as a traumatized Vietnam vet who–in a sad irony–commits suicide in the 1978 drama Coming Home.
1980 found all three Carradine siblings teaming up to portray the Younger Brothers in director Walter Hill’s familial frontier saga The Long Riders. That same year also saw Robert as a member of the titular U.S. Army division in Sam Fuller semi-autobiographical WWII epic The Big Red One. After appearing in such minor ’80s efforts as Heartaches and Just the Way You Are, Robert got the role for which he may best be known; computer geek-turned-fraternity leader Lewis Skolnick in the raunchy 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds. Carradine and fellow “Tri-Lambdas” Curtis Armstrong, Anthony Edwards, and Larry B. Scott would triumph over their snooty rivals, the Alpha Beta frat. Robert would go on to bring Louis–and his distinctive laugh–to three slapstick sequels. Offscreen Carradine continued to race, driving with Paul Newman on Team Lotus, and performed with actress Mare Winningham in a folk/pop band, The Waybacks.
Robert was partnered with Billy Dee Williams in the 1986 cop actioner Number One with a Bullet and co-starred with Cheech Marin and Eric Roberts in 1989’s culture clash comedy Rude Awakening. He played himself in Robert Altman’s twisted 1992 Hollywood satire The Player and in 1993 he was featured in the TV mini-series of Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers. Speaking of television, he reunited with brother David for two episodes of the ’90s revival Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. And he became a familiar face to Disney Channel viewers when he was cast as Sam McGuire, father to Hilary Duff’s teenage title protagonist, in the 2001-04 family sitcom Lizzie McGuire.
While many of his 2000s and 2010s roles seemed to be relegated to direct-to-video features, Carradine and brother Keith were back together alongside Tom Selleck in the 2003 TV movie Monte Walsh. He was seen in a cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. And he reunited with his old Tri-Lambda pal Armstrong to co-host three seasons of the reality competition series King of the Nerds. The final film released before his death was, fittingly, the 2024 western The Night They Came Home. It was Keith Carradine who announced that, after coping for decades with bipolar disorder, Robert took his own life earlier this week. Along with big brothers Keith and Disney architect Christopher, Robert is survived by three children, including actress Ever Carradine.