Stacy Keach (Actor), ‘Mike Hammer’ Star and UC Berkeley Graduate, Dies

Stacy Keach was an actor known for playing private eye Mike Hammer on CBS and for his Shakespeare roles onstage.  He died Tuesday, Nov. 10, at his 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.  He was 85.

Keach earned two bachelor’s degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963, one in English and one in dramatic art.  He came back to the campus in 1997 to speak to graduates of its theater program.

He was born June 2, 1941, in Savannah, Georgia, to Stacy Keach Sr., a theater director and actor, and Mary Cain Peckham, an actress.  He was class president at Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles.  After Berkeley he studied at the Yale School of Drama and, as a Fulbright scholar, at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Onstage he played Hamlet, Richard III and King Lear, and he earned a Tony nomination for the 1969 Broadway play “Indians.”  He was a founding member of L.A. Theatre Works and entered the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2015.

On film he played a fading boxer in “Fat City” (1972), police nemesis Sgt. Stedenko in Cheech & Chong’s “Up in Smoke” (1978) and Frank James in “The Long Riders” (1980), which he also co-wrote, opposite his brother James as Jesse.  Later films included “American History X” and “Nebraska.”

“Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” ran on CBS from 1984 to 1987.  In 1984 he was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport with cocaine; he pleaded guilty and served six months in Reading Prison.  He won a Golden Globe for the 1988 miniseries “Hemingway,” played the father on “Titus” and narrated CNBC’s “American Greed.”  He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.

Keach is survived by his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach; their children, Shannon Keach and Karolina Keach; and his brother, James Keach.