Stacy Keach Dies: ‘Mike Hammer’ Star, Film & Stage Actor Was 85

Stacy Keach died Tuesday at his home in Magdalenka, Poland, at age 85, his wife Malgosia Tomassi Keach said in a statement reported by The Guardian. She said he died "after a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure." Keach had previously suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in 2017, according to The Guardian.

The actor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the son of actors who met at Northwestern University, The Guardian reported. He earned degrees in English and dramatic art at the University of California, Berkeley, studied at the Yale School of Drama and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as a Fulbright scholar, and returned to New York for stage work.

Keach was considered a pre-eminent interpreter of Shakespeare, The Guardian said. He earned a Tony Award nomination for playing Buffalo Bill in the Broadway play Indians and played Edmund opposite Lee J. Cobb in King Lear on Broadway. He also headed the national touring company of Frost/Nixon as Richard Nixon and performed a one-man show about Hemingway, Pamplona, in 2017 before collapsing onstage in Chicago.

He became widely known for playing private eye Mike Hammer in the TV series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer and its later iteration The New Mike Hammer, a role The Guardian described as a "modern-day knight, a champion of the underdog." He worked twice with director John Huston, in Fat City and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and appeared in American History X, The Bourne Legacy, Nebraska, and the Australian thriller Roadgames.

His career was interrupted in 1984 when he was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport for trying to smuggle 1.3 ounces of cocaine concealed in an aerosol shaving cream can, The Guardian reported. He was sentenced to nine months in Reading Prison and served six. He later testified before a House panel about his addiction, saying, "There is no greater imprisonment than that of being dependent on a chemical substance for one's existence," according to The Guardian.

Keach won a Golden Globe for playing Ernest Hemingway in a six-hour miniseries, for which he gained 35 pounds (16 kilograms), The Guardian said. His final role was as George Clooney's bitter father in Jay Kelly. He is survived by his wife Malgosia Tomassi Keach, whom he met when she appeared in the Hammer series, and his children Shannon and Karolina, The Guardian reported.