Quoting British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the forward to Stacy Keach’s new memoir “All in All: An Actor’s Life On and Off the Stage,” fellow actor Alec Baldwin concludes of his friend: Talent does what it can and genius does what it must.
In Keach’s case, the imperative is to strip the mask away, whether it is on stage, on screen or in writing about one’s life. There’s a lot of territory to strip away.
“I started working on this memoir two years ago when I was doing a series called ‘Lights Out,’ and a New York Times journalist called Stuart Miller inter viewed me,” Keach said. “After a while, he said that if I was ever interested in doing a memoir, I should contact him. So I thought about it and said, why not?”
Keach, who lives in Malibu, will give a reading and sign copies of his book on Tuesday in a local appearance at Diesel, a Bookstore, at 7 p.m.
Known to American audiences mostly from his 1980s television portrayal of hardboiled detective Mike Hammer, or from films like “W” and “The Bourne Legacy,” Keach was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1941.
Keach has worked with the biggest legends in show business from John Huston and Robert Altman to Orson Welles and the late Julie Harris. He has played roles in Biblical epics, westerns, detective stories and mind-benders like “The Ninth Configuration.” Even stinkers like 1982’s “Butterfly” are a par t of Keach’s canon. So there was a lot of fodder for Miller to work with.
Keach also kept notes over the years. The only problem, he said, was that “one story would lead to another and then to another. You don’t know where to stop.”
In fact, his notes nudged memories that will be cherished examples of life’s ironies. In one chapter of “All in All,” Keach recounts the chagrin of being fired from the antiwar film “Catch 22,” while at the same time being cast in Arthur Kopit’s play, “Indians” (for which he received a Drama Desk Award and a Tony nomination), having just turned down the role of Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s classic “M*A*S*H.”
When Keach was a child, his father, Stacey Keach Sr., was not keen on a theatrical career for his son. He wanted Stacy Jr. to be a lawyer. Keach Sr. himself was a screen actor whose career spanned six decades. He played in a number of television westerns in the ’50s, but he introduced his son to theater of the mind with radio in the early ’50s, when he was a character in “Tales of the Texas Rangers” with Joel McRae.
“I was mesmerized,” Keach (Jr.) said. “This was the most elemental introduction to theater, so I’ve always thought radio was a great medium.”
It played a large part in him cofounding L.A. Theatre Works, readings of classic plays for radio broadcast. Currently, he is in rehearsal for “Uncle Vanya” for them.
Keach attended UC Berkeley, where he found his theatrical footing. He played in a summer Oregon Shakespeare Festival and got favorable reviews from famed drama critic Henr y Hewes before his father reluctantly agreed that his son was an actor. Keach then attended Yale Drama School before he went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Ar t on a Fulbright scholarship.
After early training, he went on to work in some 70 films, decades of TV work and became known as one of the finest Shakespearean actors in the countr y—even as “the first American Hamlet since Bar r ymore.” He still thinks Shakespeare is relevant to post-pop audiences.
“That’s the challenge, isn’t it,” he asked. “Each generation has to reinterpret what he’s saying. I first did Falstaff 45 years ago with Joe Papp. Now, I’m going to be doing him again in both par ts of “Henr y IV” next spring in Washington.”
In his memoir, Keach doesn’t spare the unsavory parts. He had his problems with dr ugs during the ’80s, and he details his arrest at Heathrow airport for carr ying cocaine and his six months at Reading Prison. But there is also a 27-year marriage to singer songwriter Malgosia Tomassi and two children—son Shannon is a graduate student at NYU and daughter Karolina is a theater student at Pepperdine.
He enjoyed the writing experience.
“It’s not easy looking back at it all, the good and the bad,” Keach said. “But in the end, after expressing ever ything, I really felt purged.”
Keach will sign copies and discuss his memoir at Diesel, A Bookstore Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.