{"id":487197,"date":"2026-02-24T07:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487197\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T07:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T07:27:07","slug":"robert-carradine-dies-at-age-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487197\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Carradine Dies At Age 71"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRobert Carradine<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tA beloved member of the storied clan of actors, Robert was the bedrock of his family, according to surviving older brother Keith Carradine<\/a>. But he struggled for two decades with Bipolar Disorder and ultimately it got the best of him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe family issued this statement to Deadline: \u201cIt 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKeith Carradine said the family wanted to know about what he called his brother\u2019s valiant struggle with Bipolar Disorder.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe want people to know it, and there is no shame in it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt 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\u2019s who my baby brother was.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRobert 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn 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 \u201chad everything to gain, and nothing to lose.\u201d He went on to forge his own path as an actor, appearing in Hal Ashby\u2019s 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\u2019s Mean Streets in 1973.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1980, Robert had two films in the Cannes Film Festival, Samuel Fuller\u2019s semi-autobiographical The Big Red One, with Mark Hamill and Lee Marvin, and Walter Hill\u2019s The Long Riders, with his brothers, David and Keith. Walter Hill cast real brothers to play real-life outlaw brothers \u2013 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring shooting, Robert\u2019s brother, David, fell in love with and then bought his movie horse, Z-Tan, who later came to live on Robert\u2019s property in the Hollywood Hills. If you drove Mulholland Drive in the 1980s, you might have seen Robert\u2019s daughter, actress Ever Carradine, riding him between their home and Runyon Canyon. <\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite 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\u2019 Jack Elliott. In the late 1980s, he and Mare Winningham had a band called The Waybacks, a nod to Mare\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis 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\u2019s and 90\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarradine was loved by everyone who knew him. His niece, actress Martha Plimpton, says he was everyone\u2019s 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\u2019s children, Chaplin and Sam, and Marika\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Carradine has died at age 71. He took his own life. The actor is best known for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,150775,13441,223870],"class_list":{"0":"post-487197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-keith-carradine","10":"tag-obituary","11":"tag-robert-carradine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}