American actor noted for a number of TV series and movies, including the 1982 TV mini-series, “The Blue and the Gray,” which centered around America’s Civil War. His other TV work included the short-lived “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer,” which ran 1984-1985. Born with a harelip, he bears a scar from reconstructive surgery. As a young man, he made his way to the New York stage in the late ’60s and early ’70s as Hamlet, Falstaff and Peer Gunt. He received an Obie award (one of three) for “McBird” in 1967, and a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut as Buffalo Bill in “Indians” in 1969. His film debut was in 1968 in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” A brilliantly talented actor, he has had extreme swings in the opportunities and popularity of his career.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, he was six months old when the family moved to Los Angeles. There, his father, actor Stacy Keach Sr., became a director at the Pasadena Playhouse. The young Keach played football in high school, but switched to drama at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1963.
After studying at the Yale School of Drama, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Following his Broadway successes, and a fast start in films such as “The New Centurions” and “Fat City,” his career froze in 1972. He was doing “Hamlet” in New York’s Central Park, and had high hopes for his role as Doc Holliday in the 1971 film, “Doc,” but it flopped.
He starred in the TV series “Caribe,”1975 and returned to the stage in 1978 in a Long Beach production of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” His ascent began again, and he returned to Broadway in “Deathtrap,” toured the country in “Barnum,” and in 1981, starred with younger brother James in “The Long Riders,” a cult Western.
A steady drug user from 1973, Keach was arrested in Britain on 4/3/1984 for carrying drugs through a London airport. His sentencing was the following year of a six-month term for smuggling cocaine. CBS canceled his Mike Hammer series after the arrest. He began an anti-drug crusade following his release from prison.
Keach lived with singer Judy Collins in the early ’70s, and was married twice, once right after college and “briefly” in 1974. He married Swedish-born actress Jill Donohue in 1981. In 1985, he married Polish-born actress Malgosia Tomassi, whom he met in October 1983 while she was working as an extra. They have two children, Shannon, born in(1988 and Karolina in 1991.
In recent years, Keach has been in touring productions, such as “An Inspector Calls.” He also moved into production, combining a love of history and acting for plans such as a maxi-series on John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln’s assassin. An accomplished keyboard musician, he plays the electronic synthesizer.
Link to Wikipedia biography