8. He tried his hand at directing. Once…

Having built a successful acting career, Carradine decided to direct a film in 1973.

He put together a batch of film projects for himself to direct and planned to channel acting pay into his first directorial effort.

He hoped to launch this career with Americana, about an ex-Green Beret, played by Carradine, who drifts into a small Midwestern town in 1973 and impulsively decides to repair a broken-down merry-go-round.

He developed the script with writer Richard Carr and took a break from Kung Fu, headed to Kansas with 26 people and a low budget and shot the thing over 18 days.

"You don't have to be a millionaire to make a movie, but everyone always feels there are limitations," he told The Hollywood Reporter "I wanted to see if it were true. I found that shooting in sequence and working with a small crew were all simplifying factors."

Sadly, while he did manage to secure a release Stateside in 1983, the critics were not kind, and he didn’t slip behind the camera again.

"It wasn't just that the critics didn't like the picture, they were angry at me for making it," Carradine said. "I'll never figure that out."

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