Stacy Keach death, Digi Mart USA News (Poland): Prison Break and The Blacklist actor Stacy Keach has died at his family home in Poland, aged 85.
His wife, Małgosia Tomassi, confirmed he died on Tuesday, local time, after “a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure,” in a statement to Variety.
“Stacy was not only a legendary actor, admired and loved by audiences the world over, but also my beloved husband, my companion and the heart of our family,” she said. “His passing leaves an immeasurable emptiness in our lives.
But his extraordinary spirit, his unforgettable voice and the love he gave so generously will remain with us forever.”
Keach was born Walter Stacy Keach in Georgia, USA, in 1941. His mother was an actress and his father worked as an actor, drama teacher and theatre director, so he pursued acting as a young man.
Keach earned a bachelor’s degree in Dramatic Art at the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
He got his start on the stage, starring in several off-Broadway plays before establishing himself as a leading man. He won several awards for his theatre work in Richard III and Macbeth with the Shakespeare Theatre Company.
In the 1960s, Keach broke into film and went on to star in movies such as Fat City, American History X and The Bourne Legacy.
He rose to television fame in the role of Mike Hammer in the series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, The New Mike Hammer and Mike Hammer, Private Eye.
He was best known for playing prison warden Henry Pope opposite Wentworth Miller’s Michael Scofield in Prison Break, and Robert Vesco opposite James Spader’s Raymond Reddington in The Blacklist.
Other recent television roles included a guest role on Will & Grace, a recurring role on Two and a Half Men, and a cameo on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Keach was also an advocate for and chairman of the Cleft Palate Foundation, having been born with a cleft lip and a partial cleft of the hard palate himself. He underwent multiple surgeries as a child and wore his signature moustache for most of his career to hide the scars on his face.
Keach was married three times before he settled down with Tomassi, a Polish former model and actress whom he met on the set of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in the 1980s. The couple adopted two children, a son named Shannon and a daughter named Karolina, and lived in Poland before his death.
