For Jamie Lee Curtis, Robert Carradine was never just a co-star. He was her first great love. While the world mourns a great actor, for Jamie, he was always someone like ‘family’.
After news broke that Carradine had died at 71, Curtis took to Instagram to share their great love story and how they still remained friends.
“I woke up to the news that Robert Carradine died,” Curtis wrote on Instagram Tuesday, Feb. 24, later adding in her caption that her friend Melanie Griffith, who starred with Carradine in 1977’s “Joyride“, was “the one who told me about his passing.”
A Live TV Kiss: How Jamie Met Robert Carradine
Curtis, 67, revisited the night their lives first intersected, a live taping of “The Dinah Shore Show” that neither of them could have predicted would matter so much years later.
Both were introduced as children of Hollywood royalty, young actors carrying famous last names and the weight that came with them.
“They had a bunch of second-generation actors, we would call them now Nepo babies.”
What started as a simple television appearance quickly became something far more personal.
“Bobby and I came on last and Bobby rearranged where we were all sitting so that he could sit next to me and he kissed me, live on television,” recalled Curtis. “A very public meet cute.”
Carradine, the son of actors John Carradine and Sonia Sorel, and Curtis, the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, shared more than lineage that night. That spontaneous kiss on live television marked the beginning of a relationship that would shape a tender and unforgettable chapter in both of their lives.
A Laurel Canyon Love Story and Young Ever Carradine
Curtis described how their relationship quickly deepened. She remembered meeting Carradine’s young daughter, Ever, during a painful moment.
Curtis said the then-3-year-old “had suffered a terrible burn from hot water and was in the burn unit, and I met her for the first time there, this little girl wrapped in gauze with the biggest smile on her face and the most beautiful eyes.”
Life together soon took shape in Laurel Canyon.
“We became a little family, in a dirt floored house in Laurel Canyon, and it was my first experience with domesticity and motherhood and partnership,” she continued. “I remember walking with Ever to the little Canyon market and bringing our laundry down to the laundromat below and folding her little clothes for the first time and the simplicity and beauty of Laurel Canyon in the late 70s.”
Curtis has previously referred to Carradine as “my first love.”
Fast Cars, Film Memories, and Lasting Friendship
GettyCurtis also recalled Carradine’s adventurous side.
“Bobby was a racecar driver and he drove fast and furious in a Corvette on Mulholland. It’s a miracle we weren’t killed,” said Curtis.
In one quiet moment, she realized he had once been her childhood crush.
“One day I remember the sun hitting his face and me turning and looking at him and saying ‘Wait, were you in the movie The Cowboys? Were you Slim?’ He was my first crush in the movies and I didn’t realize it.”
Carradine later starred in “The Long Riders” alongside Curtis’ husband Christopher Guest, whom she married in 1984.
“We were remained friends after we broke up and Ever and I have as well,” Curtis wrote. “The long and winding road. Rest in speed and humor and love, Bobby.”
