Robert started as a child actor. He was in John Wayne’s film The Cowboys 1972. Robert was one of the young boys helping with the cattle drive.
Born in 1954, Robert was 30 when he played a Frat boy in Revenge of the Nerds 1984.
I remember him in the film Coming Home 1978 with Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and Jane Fonda. A remarkable film about a disabled Vietnam veteran.
RIP Robert. Thanks for all hours of entertainment. I enjoyed many of your films.
And featured in the champion of “scenes that have not aged well”.
I’m glad they were honest that he committed suicide due to mental illness instead of sweeping it under the rug like most people do.
His daughter Ever Carradine has had a decent career as a character actor. I knew her face from various things long before I learned her name and connection.
The sad thing is that Revenge of the Nerds hurt his career.
Carradine had been building a career in supporting roles in quality movies. Then he made Revenge of the Nerds, where he had a lead role in a mindless comedy that was a huge box office hit. And that redefined his career. People weren’t going to cast Lewis Skolnick in serious roles. Instead he got stuck playing lead roles in dumb movies and cashing in on his name recognition.
And (FWIW) his niece, actress Martha Plimpton, said that out of all her uncles (and she had a bunch), he was probably the best actor.
David Carradine (1936) was considerably older than Keith (1949) and Robert (1954).
that shocked me! I had no idea he was related to those Carradines.
It’s surprising if Revenge of the Nerds hurt his career but not Anthony Edwards. However I didn’t realize there was such an age gap between them
I think The Long Riders was the only time all three worked together. They played the Younger Brothers. James and Stacy Keach played Jesse and Frank James. Dennis and Randy Quaid played the Miller Brothers. Christoper and Nicholas Guest played Charlie and Bob Ford.
I saw that movie as a kid and I always wished that I’d had the chance to drive cattle as a kid.
Wow, I’m old. Sucks to be old.
Apparently, they all appeared in an episode of The Fall Guy together, along with their father John.
At least he didn’t die with his neck tied to his dick.
Oh yeah, a really talented family.
I also know Ever Carradine from both the shows Eureka and Marvel’s Runaways.
I don’t remember seeing Robert in anything in a long time, but apparently he has been acting steadily according to IMDb, including more than a half dozen things still in production that haven’t come out yet.
I feel for his family. He had a long career and was in some great shows, he just wasn’t the lead in most of them. RIP.
That is a really great movie, one of the few Westerns I like. Robert was excellent as the youngest Younger brother. This makes me sad.
Robert’s daughter Ever was on Major Crimes ten years ago. Rusty was a abandoned teen boy that became a regular character.
Ever played the drug addicted mom that abandoned Rusty. Imdb reports she appeared in 10 episodes.
RIP Robert. Sad.
Funny story about RotNs. Way back when, I saw that movie with a girl I was dating. She liked it and wanted to see the ‘original’. I was confused, we talked around each other for a long time until I realized she assumed that since it was called “Revenge of” there must have been an original “Nerds” that this was a sequel to.
Episode I: The Dork Menace
I saw a very lovely post about Robert on Jamie Lee Curtis’s Instagram account this afternoon.
I had not realized that the two of them were a couple for a time in the late 1970s.
If you think about it, though they all had a strong family resemblance. I was a huge fan of Kung Fu and David Carradine and their father John in the old horror movies. I missed out on some of the other brothers’ work, but I think I’ll try to find some of it. There’s been some tragedy in that family.
When I saw a post about this on Facebook, I did a double take. Not because of his manner of death or anything like that, but because in the photo they used he looked a lot like Steve Bannon.