Stacy Keach died at his home in Magdalenka, Poland, on Tuesday after a long battle with heart failure. His wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach, confirmed the death of the 85-year-old actor who became best known for playing scruffy private eye Mike Hammer on television. Keach had previously suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in 2017 while performing in a one-man show about Ernest Hemingway. The incident led to the cancellation of that run, marking a physical decline that would eventually end his life. He is survived by Tomassi, whom he met when she appeared in the Hammer series, and their children, Shannon and Karolina.
A varied career defined by risk
Keach was considered a pre-eminent interpreter of Shakespeare and a favorite of directors like John Huston, yet he refused to repeat roles. He left behind a crazy quilt of performances, including a stoner cop in Cheech and Chong movies, King Lear onstage, and the narrator for World’s Most Amazing Videos. In Fat City (1972), he played an over-the-hill boxer praying for a comeback opposite Jeff Bridges, who portrayed the young boxer on the rise. He also won a Golden Globe for playing Ernest Hemingway in a six-hour miniseries, a role for which he gained 35 pounds. His film credits include American History X, The Bourne Legacy, and Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated drama Nebraska. Keach stated in a 2012 interview that his objective was to have as varied a selection of roles as possible, acknowledging that this choice probably hurt his career. He said he would not give up playing Hamlet, Richard III, or King Lear for anything.
His final role was as George Clooney’s bitter father in Jay Kelly. Active into his eighties, he appeared in Two and a Half Men, Ray Donovan, and had a recurring voice role on The Simpsons. He also narrated the CNBC series American Greed and played Cardinal Kevin Kearns on Blue Bloods. Despite these later successes, his legacy remains tightly bound to the hard-boiled detective created by Mickey Spillane. Keach played Hammer as a modern-day knight and champion of the underdog, a characterization that defined him for decades.
The low point of prison
While still filming the Mike Hammer series, Keach was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport in 1984 for trying to smuggle cocaine into Britain. Police found 1.3 ounces of the drug concealed in an aerosol shaving cream can and elsewhere in his luggage. His secretary was also arrested during the operation. Pleading guilty, Keach served six months at Reading Prison, a medium-security lockup chosen because authorities felt a minimum-security jail would provide too easy access for reporters. During his imprisonment, impressionist Rich Little subbed in as the show’s narrator because Keach could not record his lines.
In his 2013 book, All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage, Keach described the sentencing as the lowest moment of his life. He wrote that feeling like someone had kicked him in the groin with lead cleats captured the shock of his situation. While incarcerated, he received warm letters from Gregory Peck, Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, and Al Pacino. He was put in charge of showing a movie once a month and recalled picking The Long Riders himself. Keach described the experience as very lonely, very depressing, and very sad, noting he spent much time re-evaluating his own stupidity. After release, he testified before Congress about becoming hooked on cocaine in the mid-1970s, stating there is no greater imprisonment than being dependent on a chemical substance. He later took warnings to college campuses and rehab centers, using his story to warn others about addiction.
