Carradine’s death follows actor’s Zen-like turnabout after early life of hard living

Carradine’s death follows Zen-like turnabout

LOS ANGELES — Contrast marked the life of David Carradine, who became a star playing the austere and virtuous warrior Caine on TV’s “Kung Fu” even as his personal life was an excess of alcohol and drugs.

After decades as a virtual has-been toiling on the Hollywood fringes, Carradine cleaned himself up, copped a holistic outlook similar to Caine’s and revived his career in the “Kill Bill” movies, playing the ruthless patriarch of a den of killers who was a mirror image of his “Kung Fu” character.

Carradine, 72, was found dead Thursday in his luxury hotel room in Thailand, where he had just begun filming a movie. Police said Carradine was found hanged in the closet. It was unclear whether the death was an accident or suicide.

“Endless Highway,” Carradine’s 1995 autobiography, opens with the actor recounting how he tried to hang himself at age 5 by jumping off the bumper of the family Duesenberg. Carradine notes that his father, actor John Carradine, saved him, then confiscated his comic-book collection and burned it.

Tiffany Smith, one of the actor’s managers, said she and her colleagues doubted reports that Carradine killed himself.

“All we can say is, we know David would never have committed suicide. We’re just waiting for them to finish the investigation and find out what really happened,” Smith said. “He really appreciated everything life has to give…that’s not something David would ever do to himself.”

Carradine had flow to Thailand last week and began work on “Stretch” two days before his death, Smith said. He had several other projects lined up after “Stretch,” she said.

The notion of suicide was at odds with the seemingly Zen-like frame of mind Carradine had reached after his early years as a boozer and acid tripper.

“That was the biggest shock for me, actually, even more than that he had passed. It didn’t make sense,” said Frank Krueger, who stars in “Break,” a hit man thriller that was one of the last movies Carradine completed. Carradine “had a very strong outlook, very positive. He was looking forward to working. Very generous of spirit. It’s not something that I would think would happen at all.”

A martial-arts practitioner himself, Krueger said that in real life, Carradine had come to embody the inner peace and selflessness of Caine.

At the premiere of “Break” a month ago, Carradine was introduced to an actor and magician who remarked that he had never been to Hollywood’s Magic Castle, a famed private club for magic enthusiasts, Krueger said. Carradine took the man there the next day, Krueger said.

“Complete stranger, actor, fellow artist, and he just thought he should,” Krueger said. “So he took him himself, and they spent the night, which I think is a fantastic story. Sort of an example of where David was, the kind of person he was.”

“He does definitely have that kind of, that higher state of mind. Obviously, he’s lived a heck of a life, and so looking back, I’m sure he’s done whatever kind of reflection he’s done and made changes to his life,” said “Break” director Marc Clebanoff. “He definitely does have that Zen-like quality to him.”

It was quite a difference from the picture Carradine painted of himself in the old days. In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Carradine talked candidly about his wild ways, saying he had not taken a drink since 1996 but that he had experimented with “a lot of psychotropic drugs” decades earlier.

He said he gave up alcohol because “I didn’t like the way I looked for one thing. You’re kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger.”

Carradine’s death came five years after Quentin Tarantino revived Carradine’s professional prospects with the title role in “Kill Bill — Vol. 1″ and “Kill Bill — Vol. 2.” Carradine spoke hopefully then of Hollywood doors reopening for him the way Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” resuscitated the career of John Travolta.

“There isn’t anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn’t do,” Carradine said at the time. “All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin’s courage to take and put me in the spotlight.”

Carradine’s career resurgence was short-lived as he fell back into obscure action flicks such as “Treasure Raiders” and “How to Rob a Bank,” the sort of productions to which he had been relegated through much of the 1980s and ’90s.

Since “Kill Bill,” Carradine’s highest-profile roles included this year’s action sequel “Crank: High Voltage” and the martial-arts tale “Kung Fu Killer,” whose title traded on his Caine fame and reunited him with “Kill Bill” co-star Daryl Hannah.

While Carradine’s professional life was book-ended with two wildly dissimilar roles, he made a deep and lasting impression on colleagues.

“David was one of the first actors I ever worked with when I started my career and the closest person to a brother that I ever had in my life,” said Michael Madsen, who played Budd, brother to Carradine’s Bill, in the “Kill Bill” films. “It is shocking to me that he is no longer with us.”

“I have so many great memories of David that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. He has a very special place in my heart,” said Madsen, who worked alongside Carradine in about half a dozen movies since “Kill Bill,” including “Break.”

“Kill Bill — Vol. 2″ earned Carradine a Golden Globe nomination, but the movies never resulted in the sort of career do-over he had hoped for. Still, he worked constantly, adding dozens of movie and TV credits to the resume of more than 100 films that came before.

In that regard, Carradine had a similar work ethic to his father, whose career as a character actor encompassed hundreds of film roles.

Carradine was part of an extended acting family, which included half-brother Keith and niece Martha Plimpton.

Leaving “Kung Fu” after three seasons, Carradine landed some choice roles with major directors, including leads in Hal Ashby’s Woody Guthrie film biography “Bound for Glory” and Ingmar Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg.”

Carradine earlier had starred in Martin Scorsese’s “Boxcar Bertha,” and he had more TV success with the 1980s miniseries “North and South” and its sequel. He also co-starred with half-brothers Keith and Robert Carradine in the Western “The Long Riders.”

But his 1975 cult hit “Death Race 2000,” about a future America where auto racing has become a blood sport, was more emblematic of his later work as Carradine appeared in such action stories as “Warlock,” ”Dune Warriors” and “Kill Zone.”

Carradine returned to his best-known role with a 1980s “Kung Fu” TV movie and a 1990s series in which he played Caine’s grandson, carrying on the family martial-arts tradition.

He left “Kung Fu” because he felt the show was repeating itself, yet it was Caine and his exploits that became Carradine’s enduring legacy as the character helped introduce U.S. audiences to an action style now commonplace in Hollywood films.

“Martial arts was a very foreign concept. You saw little bits of it here and there, but it was by no means a mainstream thing like it is now, and he’s one of the instrumental elements that helped make that happen,” said “Break” director Clebanoff. “He helped put it on the map and make it something that’s very recognizable and mainstream.”