Posted on 02/24/2026 5:41:19 AM PST by Drew68
Robert Carradine has died at age 71. He took his own life. The actor is best known for his roles in The Long Riders, Revenge of the Nerds, and Lizzie McGuire.
A beloved member of the storied clan of actors, Robert was the bedrock of his family, according to surviving older brother Keith Carradine. But he struggled for two decades with Bipolar Disorder and ultimately it got the best of him.
The family issued this statement to Deadline: “It is with profound sadness that we must share that our beloved father, grandfather, uncle, and brother Robert Carradine has passed away. In a world that can feel so dark, Bobby was always a beacon on light to everyone around him. We are bereft at the loss of this beautiful soul and want to acknowledge Bobby’s valiant struggle against his nearly two-decade battle with Bipolar Disorder. We hope his journey can shine a light and encourage addressing the stigma that attaches to mental illness. At this time we ask for the privacy to grieve this unfathomable loss. With gratitude for your understanding and compassion.”
Keith Carradine said the family wanted to know about what he called his brother’s valiant struggle with Bipolar Disorder.
“We want people to know it, and there is no shame in it,” he said. “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. We will take solace in how funny he could be, how wise and utterly accepting and tolerant he was. That’s who my baby brother was.”
Robert Carradine is survived by his children, grandchildren, brothers, nieces, nephews and anyone who had the honor of having him in their life. His family asks for privacy at this time.
Born March 24th, 1954, Carradine was the youngest son of actor John Carradine and a brother of actors David Carradine, Keith Carradine, and Disney Imagineer Christopher Carradine. He made his big screen debut in 1972 alongside John Wayne in The Cowboys, a role his brother David convinced him to audition for by telling him he “had everything to gain, and nothing to lose.” He went on to forge his own path as an actor, appearing in Hal Ashby’s Oscar winning film Coming Home, along with Jane Fonda and Jon Voight. It was a performance that led to speculation that he just might be the best actor in the family. He followed that performance with Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets in 1973.
In 1980, Robert had two films in the Cannes Film Festival, Samuel Fuller’s semi-autobiographical The Big Red One, with Mark Hamill and Lee Marvin, and Walter Hill’s The Long Riders, with his brothers, David and Keith. Walter Hill cast real brothers to play real-life outlaw brothers – Robert, Keith and David as the Younger brothers, James and Stacy Keach as Frank and Jesse James, Randy and Dennis Quaid as the Miller brothers, and Christopher and Nicholas Guest as the Ford brothers.
During shooting, Robert’s brother, David, fell in love with and then bought his movie horse, Z-Tan, who later came to live on Robert’s property in the Hollywood Hills. If you drove Mulholland Drive in the 1980s, you might have seen Robert’s daughter, actress Ever Carradine, riding him between their home and Runyon Canyon.
Perhaps his biggest film success came in 1984 with Revenge of the Nerds, in which he starred as head nerd, Lewis Skolnick, along with Anthony Edwards. It was a role that embedded him in the consciousness of a generation and went on to become one of the most beloved franchises of the decade. In the years that followed he found a new generation of fans as the father in the Lizzie McGuire series.
Despite no formal training, or ever learning to read music, Carradine maintained a deep love for playing guitar, especially with brothers Keith and David. They appeared together countless times at The Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, Colorado, where Robert and Keith had homes. He also accompanied his friend and childhood hero, Peter Yarrow and folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. In the late 1980s, he and Mare Winningham had a band called The Waybacks, a nod to Mare’s childhood memories of riding not in the front or the back, but the way back of the family station wagon. It was a story they often told on stage together.
His other great love was race car driving, a passion that began with racing go-karts at 11 and blossomed into a life-long love of all things motorized. In the late 80’s and 90’s, he raced at the Grand Prix level, and was a driver on team Lotus with Paul Newman. Carradine always said that race car driving was his true love because winning a race meant that no one was better than him.
When he wasn’t driving cars, playing music, or acting in films, Robert was raising his children. In 1974, Carradine had a daughter, actress Ever Carradine, with Susan Snyder. He raised Ever as a single dad until 1990, when he met Edith Mani, with whom he welcomed two more children, Marika and Ian.
Carradine was loved by everyone who knew him. His niece, actress Martha Plimpton, says he was everyone’s favorite uncle. It was a role he cherished, and he never missed an opportunity to be with his nieces, their spouses, and their children. He also loved being a grandfather to Ever’s children, Chaplin and Sam, and Marika’s son, Jack. He was a regular at little league and horse shows and always jumped at the opportunity to babysit his grandkids. Robert is remembered by his family for being all heart, friends with anyone he met from every corner of his life, incapable of holding grudges, kind, funny, and loved nothing more than driving his loved ones to or from the airport.
The only JW film where he gets killed, shot in the back by the character played by Bruce Dern. Dern, the actor, would later receive death threats for killing John Wayne on screen.
Great movie!
John Wayne got killed on screen in The Sands of Iowa Jima.
Well. I have never seen it, but if it has been “reevaluated through the lens of social justice, #MeToo, and wokeism” then by gosh, I am putting it on my list of movies to watch, because it has to be entertaining.
Revenge of the Nerds was a defining 80’s movie. Thank you Robert.
He worked with John Wayne and Lee Marvin.
Such a shame.
OK, I stand corrected. Maybe the only Western?
I do recall there was a lot of controversy around this scene and Bruce Dern was really worried about the impact it would have on his career. "People are going to hate me!"
He was really a scumbag in that film!
Bi-Polar is a psychotic by-product of Marijuana use.
Dern jokes that he was popular in Berkeley after The Cowboys.
Bruce Dern was the lead character in “Run Silent”.
Went crazy-murderer in outer space to save a doomed-Earth reforesting...
Well-selected for crazy...
==8-O
“I installed two-way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood!”
That is a full head of hair.
Ya know how many would give a left nut for just such a silver mane?
FWIW - yer pasted on wig does not look real.
It never did.
The left hated that movie (The Cowboys) and was raging against it, I was very happy to watch it on main post in the army.
The movie was “Silent Running” 😇
I had a copy at one time
Didn't John Wayne also get killed in "the Shootist"?
Very sad indeed, I did not know he struggled with mental illness, and, unlike Nick Reiner, turned his illness inward instead of outward.
Nick Reiner, also suffering from mental illness and drug addiction, pleaded Not Guilty in court yesterday for killing his mother and father.
“Where are we gonna sleep?”
“You’re all jocks. Go sleep in the gym.”
The Alamo.
190 years in this time period.
True story
Back in the early 80s I was a young telephone operator
in the beautiful little town of San Fernando in the
San Fernando Valley.
One day, one of the Carradine brothers called in to
make an emergency breakthrough to one of the other brothers phone line.
I don’t remember, which one was which.
But I did recognize the name. It was exciting.
Normally, it was kids making emergency breakthroughs to their friends.
Rarely did we have adults doing it?
I also talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger before I knew who he was. He was making a person-to-person call to Larry Hagman (sp)in Berlin.
Larry couldn’t be found.
When he first gave me his name, I repeated it practicing my pronunciation, and the guy next to me said isn’t he Mr. America?
I said I don’t know so I asked him “are you Mr. America?”
He said no I’m Mr. universe. Oops.
Later I worked in the GTE phone marts in Marina del Rey and the West side pavilion. Lots of stories from there too.
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