Face of the Day

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, has died. 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 favoured 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. For millennial audiences, he was more recognisable for his roles in Prison Break, American History X and The Bourne Legacy.

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