Stacy Keach, star of stage and ‘Mike Hammer’ series, dies at 85

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Stacy Keach, known for his role as Mike Hammer on TV and work onstage, has died at 85

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Stacy Keach, one of America's finest stage actors who became best known for playing scruffy private eye Mike Hammer on TV and whose career was nearly derailed after he was imprisoned in 1984 for trying to smuggle cocaine into Britain, died Tuesday. He was 85.

Keach died at home in Magdalenka, Poland, “after a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure,” his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach, said in a statement. Keach had previously suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in June 2017.

Though he was considered a preeminent interpreter of Shakespeare and a favorite of such legendary directors as John Huston, Keach was indelibly linked with his take on the hard-boiled Hammer, the fictitious TV private detective created by crime novelist Mickey Spillane.

Unwilling to do the same thing over and over, Keach left behind a crazy quilt of roles, playing a stoner cop on film, King Lear onstage and also narrating “World's Most Amazing Videos” on TV. He played a deranged colonel in “The Ninth Configuration” (also known as “Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane”), led the TV show “Titus” and had a role in Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated drama “Nebraska.” Last year, he had an excellent turn as George Clooney's bitter father in “Jay Kelly.”

“My objective was to have as varied a selection of roles as possible. It probably did hurt my career,” he told New York magazine in 2012. “My choices have had a cost attached to it. But I’ve gotten to play Hamlet, and Richard III, and King Lear, and I would not give that up for anything.”

He played French painter Julien Mistral in the CBS miniseries “Mistral's Daughter,” a Russian prince in the miniseries version of Judith Krantz's novel “Princess Daisy,” Barabbas in Franco Zeffirelli's “Jesus of Nazareth” and Maj.

Keach earned a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of Buffalo Bill in the Broadway play…

He…

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