Keith Carradine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Keith Carradine (born August 8, 1949, in San Mateo, California) is an actor and Academy Award-winning songwriter born into a family of actors. His father is John Carradine, his half-brother is David Carradine, and his full brother is Robert Carradine. All three Carradine brothers appeared together as the Younger brothers in Walter Hill's 1980 film The Long Riders, with Keith playing Jim Younger. Carradine appeared again for Hill in 1981's Southern Comfort.

His daughter by actress Shelley Plimpton is Martha Plimpton, who was conceived when her parents appeared together in the Broadway musical Hair.

Carradine's first notable film appearance was in director Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller in 1971. He also portrayed the character Kwai Chang Caine as a teenager in the 1972 television series, Kung Fu (the adult Caine was portrayed by his brother, David).

He went on to play one of the principal characters, a callow, womanizing folk singer, in Altman's critically acclaimed 1975 movie Nashville and his song from that movie, "I'm Easy", was a popular music hit in 1976. Carradine won an Oscar for Best Original Song for writing the tune.

In 1977, Carradine starred opposite Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott's The Duellists.

He has worked several times in the offbeat films of Altman's protégé Alan Rudolph, playing a disarmingly candid madman in Choose Me (1984), an incompetent petty criminal in Trouble in Mind (1985) and an American artist in 1930s Paris in The Moderns (1988). He also had a cameo role as Will Rogers in Rudolph's 1994 film about Dorothy Parker, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Carradine co-starred with Daryl Hannah as homicidal sociopath John Netherwood in the 1995 thriller The Tie That Binds.

Other works include Emperor of the North Pole (1973), Pretty Baby (1978), Chiefs, a television miniseries in 1983, and My Father My Son, a television movie in 1988,

In 1984, he appeared in the video for Madonna's single Material Girl.

In the early-1990s he played the lead role in the Tony Award winning musical, the Will Rogers Follies. He was nominated for Broadway's 1991 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical) for this role.

More recently, Keith Carradine enjoyed a starring role on the ABC sitcom Complete Savages, and played Wild Bill Hickok in the HBO series Deadwood. He has also appeared as a host of the factual Wild West Tech show on the History Channel.

In the 2005 miniseries Into the West, produced by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks, Carradine played Richard Henry Pratt.

He has two children by his ex-wife Sandra Will Carradine (married 6 February 1982, separated 1993): Cade Richmond Carradine, born on July 19, 1982, and Sorel Johannah Carradine, born on June 18, 1985. In 2006, Sandra Will Carradine was convicted on two counts of perjury for lying to a Grand Jury about her involvment in the Anthony Pellicano wire tap scandal. Sandra Will Carradine hired and then became romantically involved with Anthony Pellicano, after her divorce from Keith Carradine. According to reports, Anthony Pellicano wire tapped the phone of Keith Carradine and companion Hayley DuMond at the request of girlfriend Sandra Will Carradine, who is now facing ten years prison time.

On November 18, 2006, in Torino, Italy, he married actress and longtime girlfriend Hayley DuMond. They met in 1997 when they co-starred in the Burt Reynold's film, "The Hunter's Moon".

Keith Carradine wrote and performed I'm Easy a popular music hit in 1976 in the United States. The song was featured in the movie Nashville and won the 1975 Academy Award for Best Original Song. This was the only winner for Nashville among its five Academy Award nominations. The song is a tender ballad about a lover who is utterly guileless and in awe of the object of his love. In the film, the lyrics are bitterly ironic. Carradine's character, Tom, is a manipulative womanizer whose habit is to reject the women he sleeps with by calling other women on the telephone after sex. When he performs the song, he dedicates it to "a special someone." Several women in the audience, recent and future conquests, believe the song is written for them. Moreover, the viewer is aware that Tom has plagiarized the opening bars from his chauffeur.