Robert Carradine^†

Getting turned down at fraternity rush week at the University of Arizona was supposed to be research. It worked. That rejection confirmed he had Lewis Skolnick in Revenge of the Nerds right, and the 1984 film made him famous for playing exactly the kind of guy nobody picks. He came to it with real credits already, a debut alongside John Wayne in The Cowboys, work with Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets, an appearance in Coming Home. Lewis just turned out to be the thing everyone kept.

After Revenge of the Nerds, he returned to Lewis Skolnick three more times and produced the final two sequels, so at least he got something out of the franchise beyond a catchphrase. Lizzie McGuire (2001-2004) reintroduced him to a new generation as the patient, square TV dad. King of the Nerds in 2013 reunited him with co-star Curtis Armstrong for a TBS reality show that was basically a nostalgia callback dressed as a competition. The career had a strange coherence: he kept playing the guy who doesn't quite fit, and audiences kept finding him anyway.

The Long Riders (1980) cast him alongside brothers David and Keith as the Younger brothers, with the Keach brothers, the Quaid brothers, and Christopher and Nicholas Guest filling out the outlaw cast as actual sibling pairs. The concept works because it has to: Westerns run on blood loyalty and these men actually had it. His father John Carradine appeared in over 350 films, a career so relentless it became its own category. His daughter Ever Carradine became an actress. The family business didn't come with an opt-out clause.

Hilary Duff posted a tribute on Instagram, writing that 'there was so much warmth in the McGuire family.' Jake Thomas, who played Matt McGuire, described Carradine as 'funny, pragmatic, sometimes cranky, always a little eccentric.' His family released a statement acknowledging his nearly two-decade battle with bipolar disorder and expressed hope that his story could help shine a light on mental illness stigma.