David Carradine death maybe accidental said by the Police Thai

David Carradine death maybe accidental said by the Police Thai. In Bangkok, Thai police say that American actor David Carradine, a cult star best known for the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu," 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.

Actor David Carradine

The 72-year-old actor's body was discovered Thursday hanging in the closet of his luxury hotel room. Police initially said they were investigating and suspected suicide, though one of Carradine's managers questioned that theory.

Police Lt. Gen. Police Lt. Gen. Worapong Chewprecha has told reporters that Carradine was found with a rope tied around his genitals and another rope around his neck. He says it was unclear whether Carradine died of suicide, suffocation or heart failure due to an orgasm.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith. In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his prominent early film roles was as singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby's 1976 biopic "Bound for Glory."

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75. 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 as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill." The character, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003's "Kill Bill — Vol. 1." In that film, one of Bill's former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates.

In "Kill Bill — Vol. 2," released in 2004, Thurman's character comes face to face again with Bill himself. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

Bill was a complete contrast to his TV character Kwai Chang Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

After "Kung Fu," Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick "Death Race 2000." He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg" in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western "The Long Riders."

But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino's films changed that.

"All I've ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago ... is just to be in one," Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004. "There isn't anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn't do," he said. "All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin's courage to take and put me in the spotlight."

Associated Press writer Polly Anderson in New York contributed to this report.