David Carradine had been in good spirits when he left to film a new movie in Bangkok, a member of his management team said. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

The sudden death this week of actor David Carradine has the Vancouver-based producers of the film Portland scrambling to fill a major role.

The indie film, by writer-director Matthew Mishory, has had to push back its production schedule in Vancouver, Portland and Laguna Beach, Calif.

Carradine was to play the role of a priest in the film about a trio of damaged souls who come together following the death of a young wanderer.

"Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time," executive producers Adrian Salpeter and Elizabeth Levine, of Random Bench Productions, said in a statement. The company is based in Vancouver and Los Angeles.

Mystery surrounds Carradine's death at the age of 72 in Bangkok after an autopsy initially failed to show a clear cause of death. Thai police said Friday they had completed an autopsy on the American actor, but results would not be ready for at least three weeks.

Carradine, best known as the star of 1970s TV series Kung Fu as well as Quentin Tarantino's pair of Kill Bill films, was found dead in his Bangkok hotel room on Thursday morning. A maid at Bangkok's Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel discovered the actor's body hanging in the closet of his room.

Police initially said they suspected suicide.

Speculation surrounds death

However, on Friday, Lt.-Gen. Worapong Chewprecha told reporters that Carradine was discovered nude, with ropes around parts of his body.

"It is unclear whether he committed suicide or not, or he died of suffocation or heart failure," he said.

Police continue to say there was no evidence that anyone else was in the room at the time of the actor's death.

There is speculation that Carradine died of autoerotic asphyxiation, a life-threatening means to heighten sexual arousal by robbing the brain of oxygen.

A member of the actor's management team rejected the theory that the actor committed suicide and said he had been in good spirits when he left for Bangkok on May 29 to film a new movie entitled Stretch.

"All we can say is, we know David would never have committed suicide," Tiffany Smith of Binder & Associates, the agency which managed Carradine's career, told The Associated Press from Beverly Hills, Calif.

"We're just waiting for them to finish the investigation and find out what really happened. He really appreciated everything life has to give … and that's not something David would ever do to himself."

Carradines a showbiz family

Raised in Hollywood, Carradine was a member of a show business family. His father was character actor John Carradine, and his brothers include actors Keith Carradine, also a singer, Robert Carradine and Michael Bowen.

David Carradine, who was married five times, also has two daughters, Calista Miranda and Kansas, both actors.

Though he started his career on the New York stage, he eventually made the switch to television and movies in the mid-1960s, working with such acclaimed filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Roger Corman and Robert Altman.

With files from The Associated Press