LOS ANGELES — Contrast marked the life of David Carradine, who became a star playing the austere and virtuous warrior Caine on the 1970s TV series "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 a 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.
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But 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."
"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."
On StarNet: Find photos from Carradine's career at azstarnet.com/slideshows
