Stacy Keach, regarded as one of America’s premier stage actors, who gained fame for portraying the rugged private investigator Mike Hammer on television, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 85. His career faced a significant setback in 1984 when he was incarcerated for attempting to smuggle cocaine into the United Kingdom.
Keach died in his residence in Magdalenka, Poland, “following a prolonged and challenging struggle with a severe heart ailment and heart failure,” according to a statement from his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach. In June 2017, Keach suffered a heart attack while performing on stage in Chicago.
Although he was recognized as a distinguished interpreter of Shakespeare and was admired by legendary directors such as John Huston, Keach is most famously associated with his portrayal of the hard-boiled detective Hammer, a character from crime novelist Mickey Spillane.
Resisting typecasting, Keach left behind a diverse array of roles, from a stoner cop in films to King Lear on stage, and even served as the narrator for World’s Most Amazing Videos on television. He portrayed a disturbed colonel in The Ninth Configuration (also known as Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane), starred in the TV series Titus, appeared in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated film Nebraska, and took on a recurring role as a New York archbishop in the CBS police drama Blue Bloods. Last year, he delivered a notable performance as George Clooney’s resentful father in Jay Kelly.
“My aim was to embrace a wide range of roles. This approach probably affected my career negatively,” he shared with New York magazine in 2012. “My decisions came with a price. Yet, I’ve been fortunate enough to portray Hamlet, Richard III, and King Lear, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
‘One of the greats’
Lou Diamond Phillips, who played Keach’s son in the 2008 TV film Lone Rider, expressed his admiration in a post on X, describing Keach as a “consummate actor, gracious, generous, and remarkably kind, even with the intensity of a smoldering volcano. One of the greats. I’m proud to have shared some frames with him.”
Keach portrayed French artist Julien Mistral in the CBS miniseries Mistral’s Daughter, a Russian prince in the adaptation of Judith Krantz’s novel Princess Daisy, Barabbas in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, and Maj. Jonas Steele in The Blue and the Gray. He received a Golden Globe for his performance as Ernest Hemingway in a six-hour miniseries, during which he gained 35 pounds.
Keach, seen in April 1984, was one of America’s finest stage actors. (Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
He garnered a Tony Award nomination for his role as Buffalo Bill in the Broadway play Indians, appeared as Edmund alongside Lee J. Cobb in King Lear on Broadway, and took part in various other stage productions, including 1993’s The Kentucky Cycle, The Country Wife in 1965, and Other Desert Cities in 2011.
Keach also led the national touring company of Frost/Nixon, portraying the disgraced president, and toured with Sleuth alongside Maxwell Caulfield. He starred in a 2006 production of King Lear at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and returned in 2017 for Pamplona, a one-man show about Hemingway, where he collapsed on stage, leading to the show’s cancellation.
‘Lowest moment’ was prison
While he was still starring in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (later named The New Mike Hammer), Keach was detained in 1984 at London’s Heathrow Airport for attempting to smuggle 1.3 ounces of cocaine hidden in an aerosol shaving cream can and other parts of his luggage. His secretary was also arrested.
Keach and his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach, pose for a photo at a premiere in 2006. (Lucas Jackson/The Associated Press)
“When my sentence was announced — nine months in prison — it felt as if someone had kicked me in the groin with lead cleats,” he recounted in his 2013 book, All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage. He remarked: “It was the lowest point of my life.”
He was handcuffed and taken to a prison cell the size of a closet, where an orange plastic bucket served as a toilet. Before entering, an officer requested his autograph on a copy of the book The Blue and the Gray.
The then-44-year-old actor was sent to Reading Prison, a medium-security facility, as officials believed that a minimum-security jail would provide too easy access for the media. He was released after serving six months.
In his book, Keach mentioned receiving warm letters from Gregory Peck, Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, and Al Pacino while in prison. He was assigned the task of showing a movie once a month and fondly remembered selecting The Long Riders as his choice. He described the experience as “very lonely, very depressing, very sad. I spent much of my time reflecting on my own foolishness.”
Following his release, he narrated the TV documentary High on the Job and testified before Congress, sharing with a House panel how he initially became addicted to cocaine in the mid-1970s. “There is no greater imprisonment than being dependent on a chemical substance for one’s survival,” he testified.
Keach took his message to college campuses and rehabilitation centers. He also married Polish actress Malgosia Tomassi, whom he met during her appearance in the Hammer series. He cherished the photographs and letters she sent while he was incarcerated.
Married 4 times
Keach, who was married four times, is survived by Malgosia and his daughters, Shannon and Karolina.
His first role post-incarceration was in the CBS movie Intimate Strangers alongside Teri Garr, which became the third-highest rated TV movie of the 1985-86 season. His subsequent film, The Return of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, also performed well, leading to the Mike Hammer series, which had been shelved since his arrest, being scheduled for CBS’s 1986-87 lineup.
Years later, in the TV series Prison Break that aired from 2005-2007, Keach portrayed a prison warden and mentioned that he tried to model his character after his real-life warden in England, who had a compassionate nature and aimed to support inmates in their rehabilitation.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Keach was the son of actors who met at Northwestern University. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained degrees in English and dramatic art.
Tributes to Keach were shared online by fellow actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael McKean, along with director John Carpenter.