Stacy Keach, Mike Hammer actor whose career spanned stage and screen, dies aged 85

The US actor died in Poland on Tuesday, ‘after a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure’, his wife said

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 aged 85.

Keach died at home in Magdalenka, Poland on Tuesday, “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 2017.