Stacy Keach

Stacy Keach (born Walter Stacy Keach, Jr. on June 2, 1941 in Savannah, Georgia) is an American actor and narrator. He is most famous for his dramatic roles; however, he has done narration work in educational programming on PBS and the Discovery Channel, as well as some comedy and musical roles.

Early in his career, he was credited as Stacy Keach, Jr. to distinguish himself from his father Stacy Keach, Sr. His brother, James Keach is known most notably for being the director of the 1993 TV series and 1999 movie Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Stacy has been married three times: to Marilyn Aiken in 1975, to Jill Donahue in 1981, and to Malgosia Tomassi around 1986. He has two children from his third marriage. He was also romantically linked to singer Judy Collins in the early 1970s.

Education

Keach graduated from Van Nuys High School in June 1959 and went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley, earning two BA degrees in 1963, one in English, the other in Dramatic Art. He received his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama and was a Fulbright Scholar at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Career

Keach first appeared on Broadway in 1969 as Buffalo Bill in Indians by Arthur Kopit. He played the actor in 'The Nude Paper Sermon' avant-garde musical theatre piece commissioned by Nonesuch Records by composer Eric_Salzman. He has won numerous awards including Obie awards, Drama Desk Awards, and Vernon Rice Awards. He portrayed film noir-style private detective Mike Hammer in the CBS television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer from 1984 to 1987. He returned to the role of Hammer in a new syndicated series from 1997 to 1998.

In the early 1980s, he starred in the title role of the national touring company of the musical Barnum composed by Cy Coleman.

Stacy Keach played Cheech and Chong's Police Department arch-nemesis Sgt. Stedenko in Up In Smoke and Nice Dreams. He portrayed Jonas Steele, a psychic and member of John Brown's Army in the 1982 CBS miniseries The Blue and the Gray. One of Keach's most controversial roles was Cameron Alexander, the militant white supremacist in American History X with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong.

He is most familiar to younger television viewers for narrating episodes of Nova, National Geographic, and various other informational series, and he performed in the role of Ken Titus, the father in the title family of Fox's Titus, and as Barabbas in Jesus of Nazareth. Beginning in 1999, he served as the narrator for the home video clip show World's Most Amazing Videos, which can now be seen on Spike TV. He narrated The Twilight Zone radio series. He also has a recurring role as Warden Henry Pope in the Fox drama Prison Break and performed the lead role in Shakespeare's King Lear at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2006.

Selected filmography

Trivia

• In 1984, he was convicted of smuggling cocaine into the United Kingdom and spent six months in Reading prison. The governor of that prison would serve as the basis for his character, Warden Pope, on Prison Break.^[1]
• He is the honorary chairman of the Cleft Palate Foundation.
• He was the first choice for the role of father Damien Karras in the 1973 movie The Exorcist, written by William Peter Blatty. He went on to play Kane in the 1980 movie The Ninth Configuration, written and directed by Blatty; this role was itself intended for Nicol Williamson.
• All of the cast members of Titus have commented they enjoyed working with Keach, because, even with the dryest line the writers could invent, Keach would find a way to make the line funny.
• He has played the title role in three separate productions of Hamlet.

References

1. ^ Stacy Keach Battles Flu, Prison Fugitives TV Guide. May 8, 2006. Retrieved on May 13, 2006.

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