‘Revenge of the Nerds’ Star Robert Carradine Keeps Insisting He’s Not A Nerd

Robert Carradine claims he should have been nominated for his role as Lewis Skolnik, the leader of the Lambda Lambda Lambdas in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds. The reason Carradine believes his acting was Oscar-worthy? Because a nerd “couldn’t have been farther from who I was.”

Carradine’s boast on the inaugural episode of his Revenge of the Party Nerds podcast is just the latest in his history of pronouncements that instead of being a nerd, he was the kind of guy who kicked nerds’ asses. “I’m not a fucking nerd! I hate nerds!” Carradine told Curtis “Booger” Armstrong in his 2017 memoir, Revenge of the Nerd. “I was Bobby Carradine. One of the Princes of Hollywood, as far as I was concerned.”

In GQ’s oral history of Revenge of the Nerds, director Jeff Kanew remembered Carradine telling him, "Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here — I’m not a nerd, I’m probably a guy who would beat up a nerd.” 

And now in 2025, Carradine is still reminding us that his real persona was a “car-racing biker dude.” “Running around with all kinds of phenomenally hot actresses,” added his sycophantic co-host, Richard Gabai (creator of rip-off movie Assault of the Party Nerds), before crediting Carradine with “inventing the nerd.”

“Bill Gates owes a lot to me,” agreed Carradine, despite the nerd archetype existing in film for decades. In fact, Carradine told Armstrong he couldn’t understand why the role didn’t go to Eddie Deezen in the first place, since Deezen cornered the 1970s nerd market in movies like Grease. 

The biker dude didn’t even want to audition for his most famous role. “The title of the film was so off-putting to me, I didn’t even want to meet, but my agent convinced me I should at least go meet them,” Carradine told Gabai. “So I go to 20th Century Fox on my motorcycle. This is pre-helmet era in California. So my hair is just like…” (Carradine mimed the rebel follicles of an Easy Rider-era Peter Fonda.)

Carradine said he didn’t get along with director Kanew from the start, hopping back on his chopper convinced he hadn’t gotten the role. But despite his resistance, he agreed to read for the part once again, this time with his hair cut tight and wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses. (He got them from an optometrist after working up the nerve to admit, “I’m playing a nerd.”)

The Oscar-worthy actor was so far from being a nerd in real life that he had to learn Lewis’ nasal laugh from James Cromwell, the actual Oscar-nominated guy who played his father. “If I had a dollar for every time I was asked to do the laugh,” said Carradine, “I’d have a house.”

Maybe Carradine was so invested in not becoming a nerd because he came from a family full of badasses. His ultracool brother David Carradine starred in Kung Fu and Kill Bill. His father, John Carradine, was a Hollywood legend, starring in more than 350 films. Robert took his dad to see his blockbuster Revenge of the Nerds soon after it came out. Afterwards, he asked his father what he thought.

“Well, son,” sniffed Papa Carradine, “it isn’t Shakespeare.”

Unfortunately for Robert, it wasn’t Easy Rider either.