Actor Robert Carradine, 71, died by suicide on Feb. 23. He was 71. The son of John Carradine and brother of Keith and David, Robert played more comic roles than most in his family: he was Lewis Skolnick in the Revenge of the Nerds films and dad Sam on TV’s Lizzie McGuire. Robert made his film debut in 1972’s in The Cowboys (he also appeared in the TV series) and went on to play gradually bigger roles in Go Ask Alice, Mean Streets, Cannonball, Orca, Coming Home, The Long Riders, The Big Red One, Wavelength, Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, I Saw What You Did, The Tommyknockers, Escape from L.A., and Django Unchained—he had a number of projects in post at the time of his death. Carradine recently told interviewer Mike Smith that he enjoyed doing TV: “The thing that’s great about television is that you tend to not get behind. Things run on time. When you get a call sheet with the day’s work on it you can pretty much count on the fact that you’re going to get to everything. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that the work’s going to get done.” Though on his Nerds films, “we had an incredible time making the film. And I think that the camera records how you actually feel and, the fact that we were on fire, for lack of a better phrase, the camera recorded that. That was one of the things that made that film work on a massive level.”
