David Carradine (December 8, 1936 – June 3, 2009), born John Arthur Carradine, was an American actor best known for his work in the 1970s television series Kung Fu and more recently in the Kill Bill films. He appeared in more than 100 feature films and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award.

Carradine was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Ardanelle Abigail (née McCool; 1911-1989) and noted American actor John Carradine. He was the half-brother of Bruce, Keith, Christopher and Robert Carradine, as well as the uncle of Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton. Carradine had Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian and Cherokee ancestry. Carradine attended Oakland Junior College and later studied drama at San Francisco State College before working as an actor on stage and in television and cinema. He changed his given name to David after starting his career.

Early roles from 1963-64 included guest performances on TV shows of then-popular genres, anthology series and westerns. These included episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Virginian and Wagon Train. He made his feature film debut in 1964 in Taggart, a western based on a novel by Louis L'Amour. Moving to the Broadway stage, he appeared in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, a play by Peter Shaffer about the destruction of the Inca empire by conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Carradine won a Theatre World Award for Best Debut Performance in 1965. He returned to TV in the series Shane, a 1966 western based upon a 1949 novel of the same name and previously filmed in 1953. In 1972, he starred as 'Big' Bill Shelly in one of Martin Scorsese's earliest films Boxcar Bertha, costarring Barbara Hershey.