Vale: David Carradine

Kung Fu and Kill Bill star David Carradine was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday, aged 72.

A hotel maid found Carradine in a closet. Police said evidence at the scene showed that he hung himself.

The actor was in Bangkok to shoot his latest movie, Stretch, where he has been staying this week. The film crew were aware of his absence when they went to dine out at a restaurant, but Carradine did not show up at the dinner and the team could not reach him.

“It looks like a suicide,” said chief of Lumpini police. “He was a big man and it would have been difficult for someone to move him in there and kill him in there.”

Police said he was dead for not less than 12 hours and found no sign of fighting, or intrusion or assaults.

An autopsy was being conducted at a Bangkok hospital.

Aside from Quentin Tarantino’s two-part Kill Bill in 2003 and 2004, Carradine was best known for his role as the fugitive half-Chinese Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s easternwestern TV drama Kung Fu. He also starred in Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha in 1972, portrayed folksinger Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory in 1976, acted in Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg in 1977 and co-starred with half brothers Keith Carradine and Robert Carradine in the 1980 western The Long Riders.

“I’ve made it pretty big as an actor in spite of being terminally shy. … ” he once wrote. “Invariably, I had huge obstacles to overcome in anything I tried. Had to work against my genes to achieve my dreams.”

Carradine is survived by his wife Annie Bierman.

Source: The Nation