Keith Carradine: short biography, stage and film career

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Keith Carradine is a famous American actor, a representative of a popular Hollywood acting dynasty. He achieved success first on the Broadway stage, and then in film and television. He is best known for his roles on Nashville and Dexter. In addition, he is a songwriter and winner of the Golden Globe and Oscar awards.

Keith Carradine's family and brief biography

The future actor was born on August 8, 1949 in San Mateo (California). He is the son of actress and artist Sonia Sorel (née Genius) and actor John Carradine. Keith has two paternal half-brothers (David and Bruce) and two siblings, Christopher and Robert Carradine.

According to Carradine himself, his childhood was difficult. In an interview, he admitted that his father often drank, and his mother was a depressed woman with signs of manic schizophrenia. His parents divorced in 1957 when he was eight years old. Custody of Keith and his brothers, Christopher and Robert, the court entrusted to the father. This happened after the children spent three months in the house forchildren who have been abused. Keith Carradine said: “It was like a prison. There were bars on the windows and we were only allowed to see our parents through the glass doors. It was very sad. We stood there on both sides of the glass door and wept. His grandmother was mainly involved in his upbringing, he rarely saw his parents.

After high school, Carradine wanted to be a forest ranger, but enrolled at Colorado State University. He dropped out after the first semester and returned to California. His older half-brother David (pictured above) encouraged him to continue his studies, paid for his acting and singing lessons, and helped him hire a personal agent.

Private life

Playing in the late 1960s in the Broadway musical Hair, Keith Carradine met actress S. Plimpton. They started an affair. At that point, Plimpton was still married to actor Steve Curry, although she no longer lived with him. After Carradine left the show, he returned to California. Later learned that Shelley was pregnant and reconciled with her husband. The actor met his daughter only after their divorce, when the baby was four years old.

The actor's first wife was actress Sandra Will. The lovers got married on February 6, 1982, separated in 1993, and officially divorced six years later. Carradine and Will have two children together: Cade Richmond (1982) and Sorel Johanna (1985).

In November 2006, actor Keith Carradine got married for the second time. The chosen one again became a colleague in the acting workshop - Hayley Dumond. The wedding ceremony took place in Turin,Italy.

Theatrical career

As a young man, Keith appeared on the theater stage in productions of Shakespeare with his father, John Carradine. By the time he was invited to the Broadway musical "Hair" (1972), he already had some work experience. We can say that the role in this project was a successful start to his career.

I really didn't plan to participate in the audition. I just agreed to play the piano for my brother David and his girlfriend while they sang, but the recruiters were interested in me,” Carradine later admitted.

He excelled on stage and was nominated for a 1991 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Movie career

The first major film work was the role in the revisionist western 1971 "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" directed by Robert Altman. This was followed by the adventure film The Emperor of the North (1973) and the film Thieves Like Us (1974).

The breakthrough happened in 1975. Keith Carradine played one of the leading roles in Robert Altman's film Nashville, which is a multi-figure film fresco. The prototype of his character was the famous American country singer, actor and composer Kris Christofferson.

In 1977, Carradine co-starred with Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott's first feature film, The Duellists. He also took part in several offbeat Altman Alan Rudolph projects, playing a lunatic in Pick Me (1984), an incompetent small-timea criminal in Insanity (1985) and an American artist in 1930s Paris in The Modernists (1988). In total, the actor took part in more than twenty projects between 1970 and 2000.

Music

Keith Carradine's family, like himself, in addition to acting talent, is also gifted musically. The actor's brother David said in an interview that Keith could play any instrument he wanted, including bagpipes and French horn. Like David, Keith combined his acting and musical talents.

In 1976, he sang the song I'm Easy in the movie Nashville, which he wrote himself. It became a popular hit, and Carradine won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Original Song. This success led to a short singing career, he signed with Asylum Records and released two albums: I'm Easy (1975) and Lost & Found (1978). In the early 1990s, he starred in the musical Rogers' Victory.

TV career

On television, Carradine appeared in 1972, taking part in the filming of the first season of the series "Kung Fu", which starred his brother David. This was followed by the Pretty Child project. In 1983, he appeared in several mini-series based on the novel by Stuart Woods. His performance on Sheriffs earned him an Emmy Award nomination.

Keith Carradine's most successful television work, however, was his role on the HBO series Deadwood. The plot of this dramatic project with Western elements was based on legends and real stories concerning the founding of the city of the same name in the state of SouthDakota during the Gold Rush. The pilot episode aired in March 2004. The actor played one of his best television characters - the hero of the Wild West, scout and gunslinger James Butler Hickok, nicknamed Wild.

He made numerous appearances on Showtime's cult series Dexter as FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy. In 2014, Keith took part in four series at once: "Raising Hope", "Followers", "NCIS: Special Forces", "Fargo".