Inside Frasier star Kelsey Grammer’s tragedy-filled life

Away from his career as a famous funnyman, Kelsey Grammer has endured a succession of shocking, violent personal tragedies.

Kelsey Grammer has had a life punctuated by tragedy, but he refuses to feel sorry for himself.

“I don’t complain about my life,” he told Page Six. “It was an extraordinary challenge a lot of the time, and there’s been a lot of pain and a lot of great joy. I wouldn’t trade a moment of it except to possibly bring back some people I care about.”

The Cheers star’s father, Frank, was killed during a home invasion in 1968. His younger sister, Karen, was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1975. And in 1980, his two half-brothers died in a scuba diving accident.

Grammer, for his part, has had a history of substance abuse and a complicated love life, including his tumultuous 2011 divorce from The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills alum Camille Grammer.

Grammer and ex-wife Camille had a bitter public divorce.

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But it seems the actor, 66, has finally found peace with his fourth wife, Kayte Walsh, a British flight attendant nearly 25 years his junior. The couple have three children together: Faith, 8, Kelsey Jr, 6, and Auden, 4. Grammer is also the father of Spencer, 37, Greer, 29, Mason, 19, and Jude, 16.

“I’ve very blessed that I got a chance to live several lives, and that’s been a great, great satisfaction for me,” he said. “To have young children at this time of my life is just one of the most amazing joys a person could have. And to have my older children as well, it’s a true blessing. I mean, I have been given great gifts.

“You know, as corny as it sounds, a day at a time. You have to keep your chin up, not give in.”

The Juilliard-trained actor has a new movie coming out called The God Committee, produced by Phiphen Pictures, in which he plays a doctor who is part of a panel that has only one hour to decide which of three patients deserves a lifesaving heart. Seven years later, the committee members grapple with the consequences of their fateful decision.

Grammer (centre) with the cast of the hit ’90s TV show Frasier.

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Grammer told Page Six that nowadays when he’s looking at parts, he wants to play “something I haven’t done before. And clearly, this was a guy very few people have ever played before. He is a very challenging character”.

The film looks at the US healthcare system in what some might say is a critical light, but Grammer declines to wade into that subject.

“There’s a virtue and things, you know, being profitised that sometimes they just work better if they are,” he said. “I don’t know if healthcare is guaranteed, just because you have the care, that doesn’t guarantee the health. So, I think there are probably virtues to both systems. I’ve certainly seen the public health options explored in England and it has some true shortcomings. But I don’t want to start making comments about other people’s health systems.”

Kelsey Grammer: ‘I don’t complain about my life.’ Picture: Getty

Earlier this year, it was announced that Grammer will be reprising his most famous role to date, psychiatrist Frasier Crane – a character he played for 20 years, first on Cheers and then for 11 seasons on Frasier. The reboot is expected to premiere next year on the Paramount+ streaming service.

“We’re going to try to make it a really good show,” he told us. “It’s not going to be the same show. It’s going to be different in many ways, but it will hopefully have the same group of actors and some new ones. [We’re adding] some new ones because it’s got to be some new people.”

This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission