Stacy Keach, one of America’s top stage performers who became best known for his role as scruffy private eye Mike Hammer on TV and whose career was nearly wrecked after he was jailed in 1984 for trying to bring cocaine into Britain, has died Tuesday. He was 85 years old. Keach died at his house in Magdalenka, Poland, “after a long and difficult struggle with a serious heart condition and heart failure,” his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach, said in a statement. Keach previously suffered a heart attack on stage in Chicago in June 2017.
Though regarded as a leading interpreter of Shakespeare and a darling of such renowned directors as John Huston, Keach was forever identified with his hard-boiled portrayal of Hammer, the fictional TV private eye invented by crime novelist Mickey Spillane. Keach left behind a patchwork quilt of parts: a stoner cop on film, King Lear onstage, and the narrator of “World’s Most Amazing Videos” on TV, unable to do the same thing over and over again.
He was a crazed colonel in “The Ninth Configuration” (aka “Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane”), starred in the TV show “Titus,” appeared in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated film “Nebraska” and played a New York archbishop in a recurring role on the CBS police thriller “Blue Bloods.” Last year he had a great showing as George Clooney’s embittered father in “Jay Kelly.
Performer Lou Diamond Phillips, who played Keach's son in the 2008 TV drama "Lone Rider," posted on X that Keach was a "consummate performer, courteous, giving and very kind even when he had the presence of a smouldering volcano.
