UPDATELOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- David Carradine's wife and his manager disputed suggestions that the actor's death was a suicide, while a source in Bangkok, Thailand, said the actor's neck and genitals were found bound with rope.
Carradine, 72, became famous in the 1970s, when he portrayed the traveling Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the television series "Kung Fu."
Bangkok police said Carradine was found hanging by a nylon rope in a Bangkok hotel room closet Thursday morning.
A member of the emergency crew who was called to the hotel after a maid found Carradine told CNN that a yellow nylon rope was tied around the actor's neck and a black rope was around his genitals. The source asked not to be identified.
"I do not know if you want to call it accidental," Chuck Binder, Carradine's manager, told CNN's Larry King on Thursday. He said Carradine's career was on a roll and his life was on a resurgence.
Binder said a producer of the movie, "Stretch," which Carradine was to act in, called him from Thailand to tell him what was happening there.
"I do not want to get in the middle of this whole investigation, but this guy said to me for sure there was foul play," Binder said.
Actor Michael Madsen told King that the one thing Carradine's wife, Annie Bierman, wanted everyone to know is, "David was not suicidal."
Investigators found no sign of a forced entry into Carradine's room, Bangkok Police Lt. Colonel Pirom Chanpirom said. An autopsy was being conducted at a Bangkok hospital, but no results would be available for another day, Chanpirom said.
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Oscar-nominated actor David Carradine, best known for his leading role of Kwai Chang Caine on TV's Kung Fu in the 1970s, died Wednesday in Bangkok, where he was shooting a film, his manager confirmed Thursday. The star was 72.
According to manager Chuck Binder, the movie's producer found Carradine dead in his hotel room. Binder told Fox News the death is "shocking and sad. He was full of life, always wanting to work ... a great person." Citing Thai police sources, the BBC reports that a hotel maid discovered the American actor in a closet with a rope around his neck and body.
Married five times and divorced four – he is survived by his widow, Annie Bierman, whom he married in 2004 – Carradine was nominated as Best Actor for his role as folksinger Woody Guthrie in 1976's Bound for Glory. Among his later screen roles was in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, in which he played Bill.
Varied and Long Career
In 1992, Carradine was born in Hollywood to the actor John Carradine and his first wife, Ardanelle, and was just 7 when his parents divorced.Shuttled between the two, he grew up in boarding schools on both coasts. Although he was orphaned emotionally, he did become close to the seven stepbrothers and half brothers he would accumulate during Dad's four marriages: Ardanelle's older son, Bruce; Chris, Keith and Bobby (whose mother was actress Sonia Sorel); Mike Bowen (Sonia's son from an earlier marriage); and Mike and Dale Grimshaw (John's stepsons by third wife Doris Rich).
By 1970, Carradine says, "I had a house in the Hollywood Hills that virtually every brother has lived in. It was like this safe harbor. We all took care of each other."
David's acting breakthrough – as an Inca king on Broadway in 1965's The Royal Hunt of the Sun when he was 29 – came only after lean years of studying music and ballet at San Francisco State, a brief Army hitch and a life-support gig as a prune picker.
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