Actor David Carradine, who broke through as the willing student, "Grasshopper" in the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" and decades later as leader...
BANGKOK, Thailand — Actor David Carradine, who broke through as the willing student, “Grasshopper” in the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” and decades later as leader of a squad of assassins in the “Kill Bill” films, was found dead Thursday in Thailand.
Thai police say the 72-year-old actor may have died from accidental suffocation, after authorities found him dead in a Bangkok hotel closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals.
Police initially said they were investigating and suspected suicide, though one of Mr. Carradine’s managers questioned that theory.
Police Lt. Gen. Police Lt. Gen. Worapong Chewprecha later said it was unclear whether Mr. Carradine died of suicide, suffocation or heart failure from an orgasm.
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Mr. Carradine was in Bangkok to work on the thriller “Stretch,” by French director Charles de Meaux.
Chuck Binder, Mr. Carradine’s manager, had cautioned against prematurely concluding the actor committed suicide.
“I know David pretty well,” he said. “I do not believe he is a candidate for suicide. He had a family. He had a life. He was happy. This movie in Bangkok was going great. He was starting three more films. He was in great spirits.”
Mr. Carradine came from an acting family. His father, John, made a career playing creepy, eccentric characters in film and on stage. His three half-brothers, Keith, Robert and Bruce, also became actors. Actress Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine’s daughter.
“It is shocking to me that he is no longer with us,” said Michael Madsen, who played an assassin in “Kill Bill.”
The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation said Mr. Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew Wednesday, and his body was found by a hotel maid Thursday morning. It said a preliminary police investigation found he had hanged himself with a cord from the suite’s curtains and there was no sign he had been assaulted.
Police said an autopsy would be done today.
Mr. Carradine appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his early roles was as folk singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby’s 1976 biopic, “Bound for Glory.”
But he was best-known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Chinese-American Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series “Kung Fu,” which aired in 1972-75.
“I wasn’t like a TV star in those days, I was like a rock ‘n’ roll star,” Mr. Carradine said in a 1996 interview.
He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine’s grandson in the 1990s syndicated series “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”
He returned to the top in recent years after two decades doing mostly low-budget films as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga “Kill Bill,” Volumes I and II.
In the 2004 interview, Mr. Carradine talked about his past boozing and drug use but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes. “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.”
Mr. Carradine’s survivors include his wife, Anne Bierman Carradine, and three children.
Material from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times is included in this report.