BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There’s something so essentially American about actor Keith Carradine that he’s found himself riding the trails of countless Westerns, interpreting Will Rogers, running a rustic coffee shop in “Fargo” and singing folk music in “Nashville.”
That’s why Carradine seems so easy as the president in CBS’ “Madam Secretary,” returning Sunday. Though he’s executing what he calls “make-believe,” Carradine seems better suited to the Oval Office than either of the candidates actually running.
“I’ve never been a personality actor,” he says, leaning back in a frieze banquette in a coffee lounge here. “I’ve always been kind of a character man, and I guess that’s my heritage. That certainly was my father’s.”
Carradine springs from an acting dynasty: his father was character actor John Carradine, his brother, Robert, and late half-brother, David, both chose performing. His two daughters are actresses. Martha Plimpton, his oldest, is currently starring in “The Real O’Neals” on ABC.
“They’re all good kids. I told them all to forget about acting except for Martha. Martha had the bit in her teeth by the time she was 11. There was no stopping her. I’ve gently encouraged all of them to find something you can make a living at but also that gives you joy. I don’t think there’s anything more important in life than that.”
In spite of his vast experience and collection of laurels, Carradine is still uneasy when he begins a role.
“I’m a little bit scared every day when I go to work. There’s always the possibility for abject failure; that is always there. There have been moments when I felt I haven’t lived up to the opportunity that I was given. That would be my sense of it, not necessarily the viewers’ sense of it. I tend to be my own worst critic. I don’t like looking at my work on film. The beautiful thing about theater is you can’t. It’s over. It’s done. We all have these garden-variety neuroses about the work and how to get better at it. Striving toward excellence is a worthy cause.”
With films “The Duellists,” “The Long Riders,” “Choose Me” and TV shows “Chiefs,” “Dexter” and “Deadwood” on his resume, his career seems a slam-dunk.
Not so, he says. “There have been a couple of occasions when I’ve done something that I didn’t necessarily feel that way about, but I had to because I needed to earn the money to feed the kids and pay the rent. I haven’t had a life where I could only choose to do things that I was crazy about doing because I had the financial security or financial freedom to never have to work for the money. I haven’t been blessed in that way,” he shakes his head.
“There have been times when I’ve had no choice. I had to find a way to make some money. And on those occasions, you do things that aren’t necessarily what you would’ve chosen to do if you’d had the financial freedom to choose otherwise. That’s just the name of the game.”
His longest siege of unemployment was after he made “Southern Comfort” with Walter Hill. “That film failed at the box office. It was a really good movie, but was not promoted. It’s interesting how this business can work in that way. Sometimes it comes down to marketing. If you don’t get the support, then the audience isn’t going to know you’re there, and they can’t find it. That might’ve been the case with ‘Southern Comfort.’ All I know is it came out, it failed, and I don’t believe I worked again for 18 months.”
So Carradine, 67, did the unexpected. He headed for Broadway, co-starring with fabled theater actors Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in “Foxfire.”
“That was the beginning of a turnaround for me in terms of reminding myself what it is I love about being an actor,” he recalls.
Married for 20 years to his second wife, Hayley, Carradine says: “She is the love of my life. I was talking to Martha the other day, she has a person in her life now. She says it’s the first time it’s been easy, that it’s not work. She always understood that making a relationship work was hard work. And I think it’s hard work if maybe it’s not the right relationship. But if it’s right, it’s kind of easy. My wife, Hayley, it’s as easy as can be,” he nods.
His wife is an actress on hiatus caretaking her father who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. “That’s a big part of my life,” Carradine confides. “He’s at home with us. We started doing this six or seven years ago because Hayley’s grandparents got to be where they couldn’t be alone … I looked into the situation, and we all agreed we would pool our resources, which is what we did. Hayley and I had a little house in Studio City. We rented that out, then her mom and dad and grandparents — all six of us — moved in together in a big house.
“We split the rent three ways, and began doing that sort of communal life, and it’s worked really well. We lost her grandparents in the last couple of years, but mom and dad are still with us so it’s the four of us, and it’s a challenge and also an enormous gift and a beautiful thing.”
