Actor Stacy Keach, known for playing Hammer, Hamlet and Hemingway, dead at 85

By Bill Trott

Nov 10 (Reuters) – Actor Stacy Keach, who portrayed rugged characters such as fictional detective Mike Hammer and legendary American novelist Ernest Hemingway, died on Tuesday at the age of 85, his wife said in a statement to Hollywood trade publication Variety.

Keach died in Poland “after a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure,” Malgosia Tomassi said in a statement to Variety.

“Stacy was not only a legendary actor, admired and loved by audiences the world over, but also my beloved husband, my companion and the heart of our family,” Tomassi said.

Keach stood out in dozens of starring and character actor parts on television and in films in roles as diverse as Barabbas (the TV miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth”) and Richard Nixon (the play “Frost/Nixon”). He also had a busy stage career, often starring in Shakespearean works such as “King Lear” and “Hamlet.” His performance as the latter in 1972 inspired a New York Times critic to label Keach “the finest American classic actor since John Barrymore.”

Keach’s most prominent role was Mike Hammer, the hard-boiled detective, clad in fedora and trenchcoat, in television adaptations of the works of suspense writer Mickey Spillane. “The New Mike Hammer” ran from the mid to late 1980s and Keach revived the character in the “Mike Hammer, Private Eye” series from 1997-98. He also played Hammer in four made-for-television movies and narrated audio versions of Spillane’s books.

“I have been and always shall be Mike Hammer,” Keach wrote in his 2013 autobiography, “All in All: An Actor’s Life on and off the Stage.”

He added, “Certain roles stick to you and I’m happy that Hammer is mine.”

The first Hammer series was interrupted when Keach went to prison for six months in England in 1985 after more than 30 grams of cocaine were found in his possessions at London’s Heathrow Airport. In his book he said he had been addicted and in 2013 Keach told Fox News that getting caught “saved my life, actually.”

Keach had a history with Hemingway, the complex Nobel Prize-winning author and adventurer. His portrayal of the writer in “Hemingway” in the 1988 television miniseries earned him a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination.  

Keach was born June 2, 1941, in Savannah, Georgia, and grew up in Southern California. As a child he underwent several surgeries for a cleft lip and cleft palate.

“Only when I was maligned and teased by kids did it bother me,” Keach told Fox News. “I became an overachiever as a result of that. I had to excel in sports to make up for that. It was a motor. It gave me an incentive to do better.”    

For some roles the scar on his lip was concealed by a mustache but in a 2016 interview with the Cleft Palate Foundation Keach said he preferred to let it show when he was in a tough-guy role, such as a mobster, or playing a vulnerable character.

Keach’s father, Stacy Sr., was a director and actor who worked steadily in television from the 1950s through the ’80s. His brother James Keach was also an actor.

Keach graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and also studied at the Yale School of Drama and was a Fulbright Scholar at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

In the foreword of “All in All,” actor Alec Baldwin described Keach as “a miraculous hybrid of the hyper-masculinity of a Brando or Robert Mitchum and the classical training of Richard Burton or Kevin Kline.”

Keach’s movie work included John Huston’s “Fat City,” “The New Centurions,” “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,” “American History X,” “The Long Riders” with his brother, “That Championship Season,” and the Cheech and Chong comedies “Up in Smoke” and “Nice Dreams.”

His regular television roles included “Titus,” “Prison Break” and “Two and a Half Men.” On Broadway he starred in “Other Desert Cities” in 2011-2012, “The Kentucky Cycle” and “Solitary Confinement” in the ’90s and “Deathtrap” in the ’70s.

Keach suffered an apparent heart attack on stage in May 2017 on opening night of “Pamplona,” a one-man play about Hemingway in his later years, that forced the cancellation of the show’s run. He also suffered a mild stroke in 2009 during a run of “Frost/Nixon” but returned to the stage 10 days later. 

Keach is survived by Tomassi, a Polish-born actress who appeared with him in various “Hammer” shows. He was married three times previously and had a yearslong relationship with singer Judy Collins in the ’70s.       

(Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Patricia Reaney)