Keith Carradine

Keith Ian Carradine, born August 8, 1949, in San Mateo, California, is an American actor whose career spans stage, film, and television. He is a member of the Carradine acting family, which began with his father, John Carradine. His mother was actress and artist Sonia Sorel, born Sonia Henius. His full brothers are Christopher and Robert Carradine, both actors, and his paternal half-brothers are Bruce and David Carradine. His maternal half-brother is Michael Bowen. His maternal great-grandfather was biochemist Max Henius, and his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg.

Carradine's early years were marked by instability. His father drank heavily, and his mother suffered from severe mental illness. When his parents divorced in 1957, a custody dispute resulted in Carradine and his brothers Christopher and Robert spending three months in a home for abused children as wards of the court before their father was awarded custody. Carradine described the experience as resembling imprisonment, with barred windows and visits conducted through glass doors. He was raised primarily in San Mateo by his maternal grandmother and had little contact with either parent during his childhood; his mother was barred from seeing him for eight years following the custody settlement.

He attended Ojai Valley School, where he participated in the theater department and performed in productions of Aria da Capo and The Madwoman of Chaillot. After graduating, he enrolled at Colorado State University in Fort Collins with the intention of becoming a forest ranger, but changed his major to drama before dropping out after a single semester. He returned to California and moved in with his half-brother David, who encouraged him to pursue acting, paid for his acting and vocal lessons, and helped him secure an agent.

Carradine's Broadway career began in 1968 and extended through 2013. His stage debut came with the original Broadway production of Hair, in which he started in the chorus before advancing to the lead roles of Woof and Claude. He has said his involvement was unplanned — he accompanied his brother David and a group of friends to the audition intending only to play piano for them, but it was Carradine himself who attracted the attention of the production's staff. He later appeared in Foxfire, for which he won the Outer Critics Circle Award alongside Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. He played the title role in The Will Rogers Follies, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Musical at the 1991 ceremony. He also appeared as Lawrence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Imperial Theater. In March and April 2013, he starred in the Broadway production of Hands on a Hardbody, which brought him a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. Between Broadway engagements, he appeared Off-Broadway in 2008 in Mindgame, a thriller by Anthony Horowitz directed by Ken Russell, playing Dr. Farquhar in what marked Russell's New York directorial debut.

On film, Carradine first gained notice in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller in 1971, the same year he co-starred with Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash in A Gunfight. He appeared in Robert Aldrich's Emperor of the North Pole in 1973, alongside Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. Altman's Thieves Like Us followed in 1974, and then Nashville in 1975, in which Carradine played Tom Frank, a womanizing folk singer. For that film he also performed his own composition "I'm Easy," which became a popular hit and earned him both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The success of Nashville led to a brief recording career; he signed with Asylum Records and released two albums, I'm Easy in 1976 and Lost & Found in 1978. His song "Mr. Blue" reached number 44 on the Canadian AC charts in April 1978. In 1984, he appeared in the music video for Madonna's single "Material Girl."

Carradine starred opposite Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott's The Duellists in 1977, and appeared in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby in 1978. He worked repeatedly with director Alan Rudolph, appearing in Choose Me in 1984, Trouble in Mind in 1985, The Moderns in 1988, and Ray Meets Helen in 2016. He appeared alongside his brothers David and Robert in Walter Hill's The Long Riders in 1980, playing Jim Younger, and worked with Hill again in Southern Comfort in 1981. Additional film credits include The Tie That Binds in 1995, Cowboys and Aliens in 2011 — directed by Jon Favreau and co-starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde — and Ain't Them Bodies Saints in 2013, which won the Sundance Film Festival award for cinematography that year. In 2016, he played Edward Dickinson, father of Emily Dickinson, in Terence Davies's biographical film A Quiet Passion.

On television, Carradine is known for portraying Wild Bill Hickok on HBO's Deadwood, FBI agent Frank Lundy on Showtime's Dexter, Lou Solverson in the first season of FX's Fargo, Penny's father Wyatt on CBS's The Big Bang Theory, and U.S. President Conrad Dalton on the CBS political drama Madam Secretary.