Actor Stacy Keach, Known as Mike Hammer, Dies at 85
Stacy Keach, the stage actor who became widely known as television detective Mike Hammer, died at home in Poland at 85. His wife said he died after a long battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure. Keach built a career that ranged from Shakespeare to film and television.
Stacy Keach, the stage and screen actor best known to many viewers as television private eye Mike Hammer, died at home in Magdalenka, Poland, at 85, his wife said.
Malgosia Tomassi Keach said in a statement that he died Tuesday after a long battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure. Keach had suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in June 2017.
Keach earned a reputation as a leading interpreter of Shakespeare before becoming closely associated with Hammer, the fictional detective created by crime novelist Mickey Spillane. His career moved between classical theater, television and film.
A career across stage and screen
Keach played Hamlet, Richard III and King Lear, roles he said he would not trade away. “My objective was to have as varied a selection of roles as possible,” he told New York magazine in 2012. “It probably did hurt my career.”
He earned a Tony Award nomination for playing Buffalo Bill in the Broadway production of “Indians.” His other Broadway work included “King Lear,” “The Kentucky Cycle,” “The Country Wife” and “Other Desert Cities.”
On tour, Keach portrayed former President Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon” and starred with Maxwell Caulfield in “Sleuth.” He returned to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre for a 2006 production of “King Lear.”
Keach’s screen roles ranged widely. He played a colonel in “The Ninth Configuration,” led the television series “Titus” and appeared in Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska.” He also narrated “World’s Most Amazing Videos.”
He won a Golden Globe for playing Ernest Hemingway in a six-hour miniseries. Keach gained 35 pounds (16 kilograms) for the role. In 2017, he played Hemingway in the one-man show “Pamplona”; he collapsed onstage, and the run was canceled.
Prison sentence interrupted his career
Keach was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport in 1984 while working on “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer,” later retitled “The New Mike Hammer.” Authorities said he tried to smuggle 1.3 ounces of cocaine in an aerosol shaving cream can and elsewhere in his luggage.
He was sentenced to nine months in prison and released after six months. In his 2013 memoir, “All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage,” Keach described the moment the sentence was read: “It was the lowest moment of my life.”
Keach later said the varied parts he chose came with a professional cost, but he remained grateful for the stage roles. “I would not give that up for anything,” he told New York magazine.
