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Chatting with veteran actor Stacy Keach

Veteran actor Stacy Keach chatted about his latest acting projects.

Stacy Keach in 'The Bourne Legacy'
Stacy Keach in 'The Bourne Legacy.' Photo Courtesy of Universal.
Stacy Keach in 'The Bourne Legacy.' Photo Courtesy of Universal.

Veteran actor Stacy Keach chatted about his latest acting projects, his SKZT (Stacy Keach Zoom Theater), which he did during the pandemic, and the digital age.

American author, speaker, and leader John C. Maxwell once said: “Dreams don’t work  unless you do.” This quote applies to acclaimed actor Stacy Keach.

Keach is an inductee of the coveted Theatre Hall of Fame, and he was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.

Regarding his latest endeavors in the acting world, Keach said, “I just finished doing a four-arc run on ‘The Blacklist’ playing Robert Vesco, a character that I created with James Spader some time ago. It was a wonderful experience.”

“I also narrated the show ‘American Greed’ on television, and I am going to do a movie in Cleveland where June Squibb will be playing my wife,” he added.

He also shared that he enjoyed doing “Blue Bloods” since it afforded him the opportunity to work with Tom Selleck. “We go back to the beginning of our careers,” he said.

“Doing ‘The Bourne Legacy’ was also fun. I enjoyed doing that film. It was interesting because it was the one time that Jeremy Renner got to play that part, and he was very good in it,” Keach said.

Aside from his motion picture and television accomplishments, Stacy is one of America’s most acknowledged Shakespearean actors, also celebrated in England where the Bard is in the blood. A New York Times review dubbed him “The Finest American classical actor since John Barrymore.”

He has won a “Best Actor” Golden Globe Award, been nominated for Emmy and Tony awards, won three Obie’s, three Vernon Rice awards, the Helen Hayes Award, and the Prestigious Millennium Recognition Award for his outstanding contribution to the classical theatre.  Understandably, his Shakespearean readings are among the nation’s best-selling classical CDs.

In fact, sales skyrocketed after Stacy took his current co-starring role on Fox’s raucous series, Titus, just finishing it’s third season. The actor’s gleeful take on the role of Ken Titus in the hit Titus sitcom, an imposing father from hell, was recently celebrated by Tom Carson in Esquire Magazine.

On earning a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special” for his acting work in “Hemingway,” where he played the iconic Ernest Hemingway, Keach said, “That was wonderful, I was very happy with that and to be recognized. Even though awards are nice, they are not a measure of success for actors, it is all about getting more work and more people wanting to work with you. It’s about moving forward and going on.”

“To be able to continue to work is a blessing and to do something that you love to do,” he added.

He started acting in theatre at an early age. He came to prominence on stage in the 1960’s, and entered films in 1968, landing a solid supporting role in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 

Keach appeared in many counterculture-driven films of the early 1970’s, including End of the Road, Brewster McCloud, Doc and John Huston’s Fat City, among them. He contributed a funny cameo to Huston’s The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

On being an actor in the digital age, Keach said, “Here we are, we are in the digital age that’s for sure. I had a great experience with my wife because we did seven different plays staring with ‘King Lear’. It was an hour and a half version, an adaptation for radio. This was at the beginning of the pandemic when the theaters were closed and it inspired us to create SKZT (Stacy Keach Zoom Theater). We did a number of plays including ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ where I played Big Daddy and Juliet Mills played Big Mama, and Maxwell Caulfield played Brick.”

Keach also notably portrayed an LA cop in The New Centurions. Another of his acclaimed film characterizations was the title role in John Osborne’s Luther. He was chilling as an easy-going homicidal sheriff in The Killer Inside Me, a stunning adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel that went virtually unnoticed until its later release on video. 

He became a youth audience icon with his comedic portrayal in both Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke and Nice Dreams. 

Other top portrayals occurred in The Traveling Executioner, That Championship Season, The Ninth Configuration, Escape From LA, and American History X.

For young and aspiring actors, Keach encouraged them to “learn their lines.” “If you want to be an actor, you need to be dedicated, devoted, and almost obsessed with doing it because the competition is fierce. It’s a difficult road with many pitfalls. My father, God love him, inspired me to do it. If you want to be an actor, you need to learn your craft inside and out, and that’s the key to success. I also taught acting.”

He shared that he wrote a book about his life, an autobiography titled “All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage,” which is available on Amazon by clicking here.

On the title of the current chapter of his life, he responded, “Finishing Touches.”

Regarding his definition of the word success, Keach said, “Success means the lack of dysfunctionality in my personal life. Also, my family, my children and my grandchildren are my greatest success.”

For his dedicated fans, Keach said, “Thank you for all of the support in the long run. My fans have been very loyal and supportive. My fans always ask me what my favorite movie is and I always tell them ‘the next one’ and the ‘one that is around the corner’.”

To learn more about Stacy Keach, check out his official website.

Markos Papadatos
Written By

Markos Papadatos is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for Music News. Papadatos is a Greek-American journalist and educator that has authored over 21,000 original articles over the past 18 years. He has interviewed some of the biggest names in music, entertainment, lifestyle, magic, and sports. He is a 16-time "Best of Long Island" winner, where for three consecutive years (2020, 2021, and 2022), he was honored as the "Best Long Island Personality" in Arts & Entertainment, an honor that has gone to Billy Joel six times.

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